There's a lot I don't like about marketing and advertising, but this essay will focus on one thing that bothers me about a lot of it: it doesn't match the product. They don't deliver what they promise. There's a mismatch between what they say and what they do.
For example, Grammarly really is great. But what bothers me about their advertising, beside the gimmicks, is when they claim to be the solution to a situation that they fundamentally can't solve. E.g, someone has a dissertation due in tomorrow and they haven't even started. Really? Grammarly will do that for you? It will come up with a research plan for you?
The thing is, this problem seems like it should be easy to address. A company can either say the same stuff as it currently says and just make sure they implement it, or say different stuff that matches what they've implemented, and the mismatch would be gone.
What bothers me is the combination of the extreme backpatting with profound mediocrity. All the companies that talk about innovation, whilst harping on about the bus factor, gluing libraries together, and complaining about a task having too many story points.
Innovation is one of those words that I tune out at this point. Whenever I hear the word innovation, it is almost always followed by bullshit. I avoid the word because I don't want to be associated with all the hucksters that use it. I'd rather do it than talk about it.
But I saw Steve Jobs mention it in a video. And, despite my negative associations with that word, and my gripes with Apple, I have to begrudginly let him use that word. Only innovators should get to use the I-word. The fact is, exorbitant prices, closed, monopolistic tendencies, Unix ripoffs, all of that aside, Apple innovated. Woz was (is) a genius, who made chips that had far fewer components and did much more than everyone around. The video where Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone, making the audience think he was announcing 3 different new product launches and then revealing that they're the same product, was amazing. It set the standard for a modern phone, all these years later.
When people brag about things they don't do, it bothers me. It's almost stealing, taking people's money under false pretences. The thing people actually wanted to buy doesn't exist, the thing they actually bought they would not have wanted to buy if they knew the truth.
Ok so we've established bragging about things you haven't done as a kind of sin. Let's contrast this with another issue: doing cool things but not communicating it well.
I have this problem. To toot my horn whilst preserving my plausible deniability/anonymity, I've done pretty cool things. People comment about those things and compare them to the things they've used, even about things I didn't really think about - it just seemed like the obvious way to do things. I spend a lot of my time looking at the issues with the thing I'm doing and what I can do next, and not a lot of time celebrating. At the time of writing this article, I have finally wrote a bit about what my product does so it can be used for the homepage, which has like 3 bullet points.
There are multiple instances of people making great things, then underselling them. Leading people into believing that they're on equal footing with or less than the big talking liars. (Actually, it's worth investigating if that's true. I'm so used to tuning out what seem like exaggerated claims, that when I hear people describe what they've done in a modest but overall positive light, I'm much more willing to give it a chance.)
This is it's own kind of shame. There's something really good out there, but people are using some crappy alternative because the people who made the good stuff didn't communicate it well enough.
You can probably think of examples of things that are criminally underrated. E.g, the Dark Knight movie isn't just another comic book movie, you have to watch it! Seriously, if you haven't watch it, stop reading this article, watch it, and come back. Half of what I say is Dark knight quotes.
The first case, where people embellish a crappy product, I'll call a marketing surplus. They have more marketing than good stuff.
The second case I'll call a marketing deficit. You can do more marketing without it being dishonest. In fact, it will be welcomed.
I'm going to call the ideal a marketing equilibrium. This is where the stuff you say adaquately reflects the good stuff you do. I think that Apple is probably the best at doing this, and that you often either see insipid braggers or geniuses living in squalor because they didn't focus enough on how others percieve what they're doing.
If you're at equilibrium and you're constantly focusing on making your product better, you'll be at a deficit and need to give attention to your marketing too. If you're a blowhard with a massive surplus, shut the fuck up and actually make something useful.
I'm hoping that by using the term equilibrium, we can apply the tools of statistical mechanics, biology, economics, chemistry, and biology, to understand this state and how to achieve it.