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Marketers are the modern day snake oil salesmen
From "The Confidence Game" I'm listening to:
When Shelby Hunt and Lawrence Chonko gave the Machiavellianism scale to 1,000 professional marketers, they found that over 10 percent scored in the highest possible range—and far, far above the population average.
And:
In other words, they were among the highest possessors of traits that hinged on manipulation and deception. And yet they engaged in a legitimate business. None of them were criminals.
I'm not one bit surprised.
Some of the courses that some people on this forum described -or complained of- sounded like perfect snake oil sales products.
Well, maybe that's a bit exaggerated, but for sure it was "OK" products heavily over-sold.
And the "just OK products" presented as if it were groundbreaking, life-changing stuff is not the exception, but the norm.
Edit: typos
Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on May 21, 2021, 2:23 pmI'm not one bit surprised one bit.
Some of the same courses that several people on this forum described -or complained of- sounded like perfect snake oil sales products.
Well, maybe that's a bit exaggerated, but for sure it was "OK" products heavily over-sold.
And the "just OK products" presented as if it were groundbreaking, life-changing stuff is not the exception, but the norm.
I watched a video today on Doublespeak: How to Lie Without Lying.
In my opinion, it is a form of lying by omission and manipulative framing.
You leave out certain facts & figures to help you frame the context to your benefit.
Here is Ronald Reagan talking up the benefits of the following graph to persuade people on the tax benefits of passing his party's bill:
Notice anything weird?
Here is the full graph with all the number:
Here is the video segment explaining how Ronald Reagan is employing doublespeak:
I should read your book How to Lie with Statistics.
I think so many marketers and market research companies use these tactics.
Thanks guys this has confirmed a decision I d already made on gut feel. Moving away from managing CRM systems projects more into finance systems. As a low Mach trying to deliver projects for the marketers was killing me. Direction changed every time they caught the ear of a superior and they spend half their day doing that. And they re expert at Mgmt by sound bite
Quote from Transitioned on May 22, 2021, 4:10 amThanks guys this has confirmed a decision I d already made on gut feel. Moving away from managing CRM systems projects more into finance systems.
I am quite curious about finance people as well.
I have a feeling that they are Machiavellian as well but more understated.
Probably Machiavellian financiers were responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis between 2007 and 2010.
I'd guess it depends a lot on what type of finance.
Finance as in accounting or as in balance sheet analysis is probably a slow field that doesn't attract the more reward-oriented folks and the ones looking for quick bucks.
Finance as in trading, deal-making, and anything where money flows easily probably a different story.
Marketer breaks down a sales page for coffee.
He says the seller should "weave a story" around this coffee.
No reference to the fact that the story should be true -or at least based on something true-.
Instead, he goes on to propose his version of a "good story":
Marketer: these coffee beans were discovered, you know, 1322 years ago when these Warriors would go into battle or when they would need to deeply focus and plan out on mapping these ancient cities and they used to extract and boil these coffee beans and get this coffee they would mix it with these mushrooms that they found on the forest floor in the Amazon rainforest and this would give them like almost like super laser-like unshakable Focus where they could focus for days at a time and they would never get the Jitters and you would talk about how they stumbled across this rare combination this was a lost recipe that had been forgotten for thousands of years until we found you know some ancestors of this Amazonian tribe and they've been passing this down for many many generations and
So far, "only" incredibly sleazy.
Now where it even gets illegal:
Marketer: we have patented at this and we've created this unique blend and we've done a small batch sample that we're only trialing in this market or we're opening up a limited batch to this
Think about that the next time you hear some crazy "story" behind a product.
