…there were a bunch of people called “marketers.” Marketers were the storytellers of their age, and what stories they did tell! But unlike the storytellers of old, marketers stories were not told simply to entertain, but to motivate the people of the land to part with their hard-earned coins in exchange for stuff.
Marketers were blamed when people found their stories to be, shall we say, less than accurate, and ignored when the stories turned out to be wonderful and true. Still, the marketers were, in some circles, compared to wizards, and were acscribed great powers, like turning lead into gold, and sow’s ears into silk purses. For just as any any other profession, there were those that were good and just, and those that were evil and deceitful. The good marketers told wonderful stories that made the people’s lives truly better, improved commerce, and spread joy throughout the land. The evil marketers spread lies, half-truths, and deception, spreading anguish and generally giving all marketing (and it’s main spell “advertising”) a very bad name.
And still marketing continued, for it was much in demand, and (as some would say) a “necessary evil” for the good of the land. So marketers kept spinning their tales, and according to the immutable laws of the show business, made the difficult look easy, and the easy appear to be difficult. They amazing the huddled masses (not to mention the muddled asses), and soon convinced them that this marketing stuff must be easy to do. Soon, everyone thought that they too could become a marketer, and thus assumed that they too could tell stories that the people wanted to hear.
Sadly, even though the people bought wonderful tools that promised to turn them into marketing wizards – tools with wonderful names like “Flash” and “Word” and “Illustrator” – the tools did not set them free, nor did they turn them from mere mortals into marketers. Nay, the tools no more made them marketers than did the purchase of Excel tun them into financial wizards or the purchase of QuickBooks turn them into financial wizards. And so the people turned to the marketers once again, in the hopes that they could use their mighty powers to craft stories that the people would hear and to which they would respond. And the mighty marketers responded, once again creating stories the world wanted to hear.
So what of the evil marketers? Alas, they still exist, with their snake-oil stories and less than ethical business practices. But the good marketers also continue to exist and flourish, for as we all know, good triumphs over evil in the end.
The moral of our story? When you have a story to tell, find a good marketer to tell it, and don’t fall prey to the siren song of the less-than-honest purveyors of the craft. Do this, and your story will always have a happy ending.
The End.
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