I think positioning any kind of advertising as "helpfully informing" consumers is wrong. The ad wants me to buy the product. That's its purpose. No matter if it's bad for me. No matter if it's useless, or overpriced, or a competitor makes a better one. If a product I happen to buy because of an ad is actually the best use of my money, that's nothing more than a happy coincidence. No ad ever gave a list of reasons why you shouldn't buy a product.

When someone clearly lists the merits of a product without conflict of interest, then that does indeed lets people known what goods and services make their lives better. We have a different word for that - a "review". The purpose of an ad, by definition, is not to inform - the purpose is to persuade. They are opposites.

> This is marketing at its worst.

This is marketing at its real. As practiced.

> I don't think telling people the product you created to serve their need is inherently evil.

Of course it isn't evil, but this is not what marketing is doing - and claiming so amounts to a motte-and-bailey defense of an industry that's rotten to the core and quite openly malicious towards their fellow human beings.

I am not defending these practices at all, I am just saying the idea of marketing is not inherently evil.

I also think you are being unfair if you say there are zero companies that do marketing right.

"I am just saying the idea of marketing is not inherently evil."

And probably most of us, including me, would agree. The problem is when the market is saturated with goods compared to buyers so that more aggressive methods - read: lies and subtle psychological tactics - are used to convince those buyers they need this or that product when they actually don't. Which becomes even more evil when the product is something potentially harmful such as unneeded food, medicines, anything that will be soon thrown away creating more pollution, etc. The problem isn't marketing by itself, but the total disregard for moral issues that can and will make it harmful once overproduction and saturated markets get us to a point where lying is the only way to keep businesses alive.

I won't go so far as to say there are zero companies doing ethical marketing, but I am convinced there are very few of them - simply because ethical marketing is at severe competitive disadvantage to unethical one.

You were the first person to call the idea of marketing evil here.

Correct. In capitalism, marketing is the bidirectional flow of information correcting the asymmetry from inefficient markets. This manifests as branding, advertising, affiliate, etc. in the consumer direction and research, surveying, tracking, etc. in the seller direction.

It is the opposite of what GP is saying here, despite their doomsaying at their own revelation that retailers are listening to the broadcasting device consumers bring onto their property to better understand them.