Recently watching Flava Flav and his biiiiig timepiece on the Ellen DeGeneres show on Tivo (don’t ask; it was a first and likely last for me, prompted by a friend), I started wondering about the power of marketing.

Everyone knows that Marketing beats technology. Think about it:

• VHS and Betamax.
• Diamonds (yes, they’re more common than Sapphires and other stones, and until the cartel started marketing them, they weren’t that expensive…).
• Mechanical watches, especially the high-end ones (once, this made sense; expensive ones kept better time, which is the difference between mutiny and land-ho when you’re sailing – but now Timex is about equal to Patel)(This is the Flava Flav connection. Watches. And his brilliant self-branding as "the guy with the biiiiig watch")

It’s sad that this is the case. I had a CEO lament this last week. In their words, “I just don’t like Marketing. It seems unnecessary and dishonest”. And I agree with some of the spirit of that statement – truly brilliant mousetraps should cause the world to beat a path to your door.

But most mousetraps are largely undifferentiated… and moreover, they’re being sold into a world where there’s too much information and not enough time to consider the finer points of the mousetrap.

So marketing enters the picture in a good way, in that ideally marketing would find the right people with the right needs, and match them to products.

Unfortunately, lazy sales and marketing means that too often, marketing is perverted into “spin what you have into something that people think they need”. Which is sad.

So I guess this blog entry in sum is more a cautionary note than an observation of good or bad marketing per se – or maybe it’s a plea. Marketing is powerful, and can be used for good or evil. So please, think about what you’re doing. It’s a great game, but in the end, marketing will shape the world as much as innovation – maybe more – so think about what you’re creating when you spin. It all comes back around.

[ps: Please buy my book. http://buynow.stupidmarketing.com -- and tell your friends!]