16-year-old British girl earns £48,000 helping Chinese people name their babies

Re:16-year-old British girl earns £48,000 helping Chinese pe... by aidenn0 on Wednesday September 07, 2016 @03:46PM (#12446766)

Here's an example with the metaphor where marketing is not zero-sum:

1) Person A makes a crappy bandage (Y units of quality) with X units of budget and markets with 9X units of budget

2) Person B makes a decent bandage (5Y units of quality) with 5X units of budget.

If person B were to also market the bandage with 5X units of budget, they will take a larger fraction of person A's market share than if they don't, thus providing more value to people. Yes you can argue that if person A didn't exist, then they wouldn't need to spend this money and the bandage could be cheaper, but this is clearly an example where adding marginal marketing can be a net benefit to society.

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Re:16-year-old British girl earns £48,000 helping Chinese pe... by TeMPOraL on Wednesday September 07, 2016 @06:19PM (#12448403)

Yes, I agree that adding a marginal marketing can be a net benefit to society. But the problem is, in the real world, the person A wins - marketing has much better ROI than investing in quality. I argue against the marketing precisely because of its power to paper over the problems with the actual good/service.

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