‘Markets are created by behaviors, not by products’

The fact that in the modern era ‘Markets are created by behaviors, not by products’, is very true, latent, and powerful. Humans as a race are behavioral mammals with great aspirations. Behaviors and aspirations are what make us be. Marketing is making us be.

“Sé lo que quieras ser; Sé una Barbie girl” (Be what you want to be, be a Barbie girl – jingle in Mexican ads for Barbie). Barbie is not only a doll, it is the opportunity for a little girl to project and pour all of her aspirations into a pretend game and into a puppet that can have the life and the material things that she doesn’t possess.

“Soy, totalmente Palacio” (I’m totally Palacio – slogan for department store, directed mostly to Mexican women). A woman that doesn’t mind how much things cost, that puts shallowness and vanity above all female and motherly values and turns into a compulsive buyer with a perfect figure, a perfect image, and the opportunity to have the most expensive and materialistic possessions, discrediting what they cost and what they really are for. And now, the campaign is turning towards men, too.

And further on. This is not only about the ability to make people buy a product or a service, it goes further and further into ethical matters. How much is it your fault that an advertisement campaign is so effective that you are making mothers shallow, little girls anorexic, and people fat? How much is it on the conscience of the Marlboro advertiser when a smoker gets cancer from purchasing their cigarettes? It is, in the end, in the consumer’s power to ignore or accept the advertisement’s suggestion, and it is only a marketer’s job, but isn’t it also their job to be so convincing, almost hypnotic, about selling? Isn’t it a marketer’s job to make people smoke and forget about health?