Marketing
Created | Updated Mar 31, 2002
Marketing is somewhat similar to fortune telling. It attempts to foretell the future through a mystical means known only to its practitioners,
is just about as accurate, and has not quite as much scientific basis for its existence. When one has a new product, one takes it to a marketing company that is supposed to specialize in selling your idea. They will
do demographic studies, collect data from focus groups, perform real-time market tests, collate the data, put it through
a process called linear regression analysis, print up the results in triplicate, and send them to you along with a sizable
bill for their services. Then, for some unfathomable reason, they will create an absolutely hideous commercial and begin
to run it on the All Cheese Network at 3 AM in a remote location populated only by sheep and men with more fingers than teeth. Marketing differs from fortune telling in that fortune tellers tend to be colorful
gypsies who dazzle you with crystal balls, beaded curtains, and all sorts of mysterious psychic arcana, while marketers are fast talking
con artists in expensive ties who will dazzle you with technical terms that may possibly have no actual meaning
whatsoever, then disappear until it's time to inform you that your product won't sell and that the last several years of
your life and your children's college tuition went to waste since they have all been invested in a product that would
serve a more useful purpose on a dungheap rather than on someone's mantle.
is just about as accurate, and has not quite as much scientific basis for its existence. When one has a new product, one takes it to a marketing company that is supposed to specialize in selling your idea. They will
do demographic studies, collect data from focus groups, perform real-time market tests, collate the data, put it through
a process called linear regression analysis, print up the results in triplicate, and send them to you along with a sizable
bill for their services. Then, for some unfathomable reason, they will create an absolutely hideous commercial and begin
to run it on the All Cheese Network at 3 AM in a remote location populated only by sheep and men with more fingers than teeth. Marketing differs from fortune telling in that fortune tellers tend to be colorful
gypsies who dazzle you with crystal balls, beaded curtains, and all sorts of mysterious psychic arcana, while marketers are fast talking
con artists in expensive ties who will dazzle you with technical terms that may possibly have no actual meaning
whatsoever, then disappear until it's time to inform you that your product won't sell and that the last several years of
your life and your children's college tuition went to waste since they have all been invested in a product that would
serve a more useful purpose on a dungheap rather than on someone's mantle.
