Marketing Is A Joke
Mike Leitao ~ 03/26/2025
It is no secret I’m not the biggest fan of marketing in the world. I’ve ripped on it in the past, but recent events have me realizing that shitting on marketing isn’t the right move, I should be shitting on marketers. If you have been active on social media of late, you may have seen the influencer who is making some ridiculous content of his insane morning that includes things such as rubbing bananas on his face and doing a jump into a pool that somehow lasts 4 minutes from time of jump to time of landing. Another big part of his routine is dunking his face in an ice water bath where the water isn’t just regular old tap water, but is Saratoga water. This sparkling water comes in pretty blue bottles and is expensive. He not only uses it for his morning head dunks but also to drink, cool off, and honestly anything involving water, he uses Saratoga. Now I’m pretty sure this has to be a sponsored deal between these two parties that they just aren’t obviously announcing, but it’s working out great it. Saratoga Google searches are through the roof and it is sold out almost everywhere. So somehow, a marketing plan that involved giving a random influencer your product and letting him basically be ridiculous but acting serious has worked tremendously. And this tells me one simple thing. The idea that we need people to go study marketing is absolutely absurd.
I’m not saying people in marketing are dumb. I know plenty of people in the field and they are honestly, mostly smart individuals. What I am saying however, is that thinking marketing is a skill is hilariously stupid. I am an accountant, and I would qualify that as a skill. Same way I would say engineering or architecture or medical science is a skill. These are jobs that you need a background for to be able to properly complete. If I pulled a random dude off the street and had him try and balance an accounting statement, he’d be cooked. Similarly, if I asked him to design a building or a machine or do some medical testing he’d be lost and probably end up killing himself or someone else from his failures. But go grab that same person off the street and give them a product and say market it, they will more than likely be able to produce some type of ideas for the product assuming they have basic common sense. Now yes, part of this is due to the emergence of the internet and social media meaning anyone can essentially market anything, but even so, it’s still incredibly simple stuff to be able to understand and do. Look at any small company’s marketing strategy right now. It is probably having some young unpaid intern create Tik Toks that younger generations find enjoyable and thus boosting engagement with the company and product that leads to increased sales. It doesn’t take a masters degree in marketing to know that it is as simple as determining the market, figure out what market interacts with, do that thing. Marketing is seriously that simple.
Another thing with marketing that makes it so easy anyone can do it is that advances in marketing aren’t the same as other departments. Business-focused departments like accounting and finance develop with technology, as better technology such as AI allows them to become more efficient and maximize resources. Departments like medical research and science are normally driven by money as more money invested allows for new drugs to be created and tested resulting in better treatments. For marketing, it’s essentially random bullshit luck. A random trend happens that had no early signs and now marketers adjust to the trend to make their product fit. Will the trend last for 10 days or 10 months? No one knows. That might make it sound like marketing would be a harder job based on randomness and parity, but in reality it allows way more leeway for mistakes and failures since they can be blamed on ever shifting market trends.
If you were to ask me of recent marketing strategies that were ultra successful, there is one that instantly comes to mind. The media presentation and presence of Donald Trump is undoubtedly one of the greatest examples of marketing ever. Whether you love him or hate him, there is simply no denying the fact that his ability to market himself to the people has been ultra successful, as evidenced by his two presidential reigns. Between the crazy tweets, the rallies, the red MAGA hats, and everything else over the past decade now, the marketing of Trump has been an overwhelming success. You might think it can’t be a success since a lot of people hate him, but the goal of the marketing of him would be to get him elected, and he’s now done it twice.
I’m going to prove how easy marketing is right now. I’m just going to start naming random objects and then explain in a sentence or two how I would market them and as you read through them the only thing you will think is “Wow, this all makes sense, this is pretty easy”:
Coasters:
I’d target millennials with old school coaster designs around memes they think are funny that are actually really bad and then target gen Z by making coasters that make fun of the other coasters. This would cause online arguments between generations and increase traffic to the product.
Vases:
I would take competitors' vases and smash them over people’s heads showing they break easily, then use our vase and it wouldn’t break and instead you’d imply it would kill someone if you hit them. This both shows the durability of the vase and has a nice dark humor twist.
Sunglasses:
Super simple here, simple ad showing how much annoyance you can hide under a good pair of sunglasses. Young people have very vocal facial expressions, so they would love this one.
Lighter:
If it’s a state with legal weed, use the lighter to smoke. If it’s not a state with legal weed, use the lighter to light something that looks like smoking weed, but would actually be something else like a grill or something.
Backpack:
Follow an influencer around and show how they use the backpack to store everything they need and use in a day to do what they need to do (record content, edit, etc.). Young kids all want to be influencers so by showing the product they will want it.
Seriously, it’s actually that simple. Yes, there are some great marketing teams out there, Red Bull instantly comes to mind. But unless you are one of the few elite groups out there, the difference between the rest is basically non-existent, so go out there and find those college kids who you can take advantage of for free labor that will result in great marketing!
