Why Marketing Is Often Misunderstood
I have to admit that, at first, I also thought marketing was something bad and deceitful.
For two reasons.
First, because I often heard the word used in negative contexts and confused with “advertising.”
Whenever you bought a low-quality product sold at a high price, or saw people willing to pay a lot for things that you personally found worthless, there was always that friend shaking their head and saying knowingly:
“It’s all marketing…”
The underlying message? If marketing is involved, then the product isn’t worth what it costs.
Marketing Through the Eyes of Douglas Adams
Another reason was Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and one of my all-time favorite writers.
In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (the second book in the “trilogy in five parts,” as Adams called it), he tells the story of the Golgafrinchans, a civilization that needs to evacuate its home planet.
They decide to build three spaceships:
- Ship A carries truly important individuals, such as scientists, thinkers, and leaders.
- Ship C is reserved for essential manual laborers, such as farmers and technicians.
- Ship B is packed with people deemed (especially by Adams) moderately useless.
Among the professions onboard Ship B are marketing consultants, telephone sanitizers, hairdressers, public relations consultants, committee staff, and mid-level corporate executives.
With a clever trick, they are sent into space to “colonize” a new world—when in reality, the real goal was to get rid of them.
Their ship, the only one that actually launches, crashes onto a small blue planet located in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way.
(Spoiler alert: that’s us.)
How I Changed My Mind About Marketing
Of course, Adams’ irony also reveals what happens to the Golgafrinchans who remained on their home planet.
After ridding themselves of the “useless” people, they quickly perished due to something absurdly trivial: a plague spread through unsterilized telephones.
Beyond Adams’ brilliant take on who is truly valuable in society—and how we all depend on the so-called “useless”—this was the only time I found myself thinking: maybe he didn’t get it quite right this time.
It didn’t happen immediately, but it changed when I started studying marketing. (Discover how marketing can help you stand out from the competition)
Now, I know that the Hitchhiker’s Guide is infallible. More often than not, it’s reality that gets things wrong.
The Power of Communicating Your True Value
I’m not here to list all the reasons why good marketing does more good than harm. But if you’ve been following me for a while, you might have already figured that out.
In any case, I won’t stop talking about it today, so if you’re interested, you’ll find more insights in the future.
But the real takeaway from this personal story is that we often form opinions based on hearsay.
Then, when we take a closer look at something, we realize it’s actually pretty awesome—so much so that I decided to work in this field.
When Public Perception Doesn’t Match Reality
Now, imagine if what people say about you isn’t truly who you are.
Or even worse, imagine if the way you tell your story doesn’t make you more appealing but instead drives potential clients away? (Here’s why data matters in marketing)
Wouldn’t that be a mistake you could avoid?
Maybe you’re not selling as much as you could simply because of this.
How Marketing Can Make or Break Your Business
I’m telling you—if you want to chat about it, just send an email to info@lliquida.com. (See how an effective communication strategy transformed the launch of the Dracan 24)
You might discover that the problem isn’t what you do, but how you tell your story.
