You might be wondering why I chose to write on whether marketing is inherently evil. Let me explain. A friend recently asked me for a loan, and while doing so, he complained bitterly about how he had been manipulated into spending all his money on a device he didn’t need – simply because of a compelling offer he saw in an advertisement. To him, this was a valid excuse to ask for financial help. However, that’s not the focus of this discussion.
Years ago, before I had a clear career path, I attended a marketing conference where the speaker emphasised what it truly meant to be a marketer. According to him, being great at marketing meant being able to “sell ice to an Eskimo.” The idea fascinated me – selling ice to someone already surrounded by it.
In my view, convincing an Eskimo to buy ice in the Arctic would require either an extraordinary gift of persuasion or sheer trickery. If marketing had the power to make someone act against their best interests, didn’t that suggest it undermined personal autonomy? This, along with its impact on competition and social values, raises the question: Is marketing inherently evil?
The answer is no.
The existence of consumer manipulation, aggressive consumerism, and cutthroat competition as consequences of marketing does not make marketing itself inherently evil. Let me illustrate this point with another story.
In 2016, I attended a Business Ethics class at the Enterprise Development Centre, facilitated by Nwamaka Onyiuke – a brilliant teacher, if I may add. At the beginning of the lecture, she posed four questions to the class, asking us to answer each with “right” or “wrong”:
- Selling arms to countries with unstable political environments?
- Advertising products high in saturated fat or sugar?
- Encouraging consumers to borrow large amounts to fund their spending?
- Employing private investigators to check employees’ private lives?
The first and last questions received an overwhelming “wrong” from the room, with only a few dissenting voices. However, the second and third questions sparked debate. The class was divided, and rightly so, because the idea that “marketing is inherently evil” is itself polarising. The truth is that businesses rely on marketing to sell products and services, making it an essential function rather than an inherently unethical one.
Over time, I learned that effective marketing involves identifying a need and creating a product or service that fulfils that need. If a product lacks real value, marketers may resort to manipulation—what some call “selling ice to an Eskimo.” But the act of marketing is neither good nor evil in itself; rather, its morality depends on how it is used.
As Faan Rossouw once said:
“Objects are morally ambivalent—the scalpel can both kill and cure, the hammer can both create and destroy.”
Any tool, whether physical or abstract, becomes an extension of the person wielding it. Its intent and application determine whether it is “good” or “evil” in a given context. Like a scalpel, marketing has the potential to both help and harm. Ultimately, as with beauty, the perception of evil lies in the eyes of the beholder.
