As the growing crazes of exercise, nutrition and social inequality show, sometimes old wisdom is the best predictor of the next revolution. This is nowhere more evident than in the latest radical marketing revolution. Having rediscovered the effectiveness of imprisoning, psychologically abusing, defrauding, and then coercing customers, can you really blame marketing managers for their excitement? No more wasting energy with informing customers to make a choice, no more sponsoring athletes or social media influencers, and no more spending your own budget on promotion. The new model spends international body, government, police, media and military budgets on promoting your product. The new model wastes no time seeking informed consumers when coerced consumers are available. But perhaps the biggest rediscovery is that indoctrinated consumers are far better than paid sponsors. Not only do they come for free, but they will keep marketing to themselves no matter what data or information arrives in objective reality.
While we are looking at the past, let’s not forget the old services and products which can be revived under such a system. Despite steady growth since it’s ‘abolishment’, expect slavery to make a strong surge, with more imprisoned, coerced and manipulated people able to ‘choose’ it than ever before. Likewise, religious indulgences will be once again be saving many a soul, though they might be slightly rebranded as social credits. Even niche markets like lobotomizing patients or circumcisions for voiceless youths will flourish under the new paradigm.
But progress such as this is not without it’s risks. There is now nothing stopping interns from using similar soulless techniques internally, so joining or supporting the marketing team becomes fraught with danger of disappearance, and imprisonment of one’s own. Further, Marketing Managers who, in the past, allowed their customers to awaken found themselves at the receiving end of brutal reprisals. The censorship, spying, and general corruption required to keep people subdued has invariably cost more than the original budget to simply try to sell in free markets. Here’s hoping this time is different.