The life of a marketer begins in high school, probably during the future soul stealer’s junior year, when they’re approached by a bearded man in a derby and a trench coat. It’s always that guy. “Psst,” he whispers from shadows, the looks of which suggest that he himself created them. “Listen. You want to make money, right? Major in Business when you go to college.”
Many of us are confused at first, since the leap from “making money” to “majoring in business” seems pretty far to a lowly high school student.
“Seriously, though. Want to be a Doctor? Med schools like Business students. Then, you have the know-how to run your own practice! Want to be a Lawyer? Same thing! And then, of course, there’s doing something that they teach you directly, like accounting or investment banking. Endless opportunities!”
At this point, most of us are sold. The rest will change their major to Business when they realize they hate writing Literary Analysis papers as Liberal Arts Majors.
Fresh off the graduation stage, we move on to Business School, where we assume we’ll major in one of the more popular and altruistic disciplines like Accounting or Finance (Lehmann and Enron, you guys were diamonds in the rough). After all, we want to make money, right? What better way to do that than to spend our career swimming in someone else’s?
But those of us destined for true greatness receive the call at the beginning of our Sophomore year, once we’ve gotten our meaningless courses like Economics and Biology and Calculus out of the way. There’s no point in studying the way the world works if I’m going to be deciding how it works, anyway. Right?
As I was saying: The invitation emanates through our laptop speakers one night, during a routine binge on Malcom Gladwell TED Talks. A disembodied voice, neither completely male nor completely female, beckons right as our “perfect Pepsis” chills set in. “If you want to realize your true potential, report to the Marketing Office tomorrow morning at 6:66.” That’s all the voice says before the Folger’s jingle begins playing through our speakers.
I remember the following day more vividly than any other in my life, and not just because the sun rose an hour later than usual. It was the morning I met the Marketing Program Director–the owner of the disembodied voice. I stepped into their office at precisely 7:06, from the smooth, reflective tile floor of the University hallway to the uneven mortar-bound stone within. My heart tried to pound its way from my chest in my mixture of excitement and anxiety. What did the voice mean by “realize your true potential?” I had to know, but part of me was terrified by the prospect of an answer.
The echoing sound of water dripping into distant pools on the stone floor kept me company as I waited on a steel bench for the Marketing Program Director to see me. I remember bowing my head and closing my eyes to focus on the sound of the water, until I felt a sudden change. My skin chilled, as if to tell me that the office had suddenly become a walk-in freezer. My insides, however, floated in warm bath water. My instincts raised my head and opened my eyes so that I could see the new figure in front of me. The Director wore an ashen cloak, tightened at the waist by a deep red sash. A hood covered the Director’s head, obscuring their entire face in shadow, but for two glowing red eyes.
The Director spoke, bellowing distinctly sulfuric breath from under the hood they wore. “You probably plan on majoring in Finance or Accounting, don’t you?”
My own disposition surprised me. I felt completely at home with the Director, like I were talking about my eating habits with the world’s most accomplished dietitian. “Well, yeah, I think so. They seem to be the routes that open the most doors for a graduate.”
The Director’s subsequent laugh instilled in me a shame I didn’t fully understand. “Really?” The Director asked in disbelief. “You’re looking for a degree with security attached to it?” The cloaked figure spat the word “security” like a seed one finds in a watermelon.
“Everyone who matters is a marketer,” continued the Director. “CEOs are Marketers. Consultants are Marketers. Parents are Marketers. And yes, even Teachers are Marketers. What do these people have in common, Ryan?”
I hesitated.
“They control other people. Yes, Ryan. These people make their living on control–on literal self-empowerment. Don’t you want that?”
I hesitated again, but for a shorter time. “Actually, yes. I think I would really like that.”
“Good.” The warmhearted hiss of the director gripped my very soul that instant. I knew I wanted to be a Marketer. But what next?
The Director, having absorbed the thoughts directly from my head, continued: “Before you begin your Marketing training, you must pass one test.”
“Good,” I eagerly replied. “I’m ready for anything. What do I have to do?”
The challenge slithered out from under the hood: “Leave this building.” Then the Director vanished in a ball of fire, the building burst into flames, and a folder full of three peoples’ private personal data manifested itself in my hands.
To leave the building, I had to examine the personal data in my folder and make use of the resulting insight. Specifically, I used fear to convince a member of the Football team to ram his way through a burning door so that I could pass through unscathed (“Your father wouldn’t be happy to learn that he won the war so that his son could cower in front of burning doors, would he?”). Then, I assumed an air of authority in order to recruit two beautiful yet insecure cheerleaders to my cause (“fire’s actually quite predictable when you come from a family of Fire Marshals”). My third and final task involved the maintenance manager. He had a hose attached to a water fixture, but the system’s pressure had plummeted when a pipe ruptured in the inferno. It would just barely stall the flame’s spread, nothing more. Working with the cheerleaders, I appealed to the maintenance manager’s sense of sexuality ([details omitted]), after which he happily stayed behind with the faulty hose to stall the blaze and allow for my narrow escape.
Having survived the test, I would begin my training in the morning.
Our first Marketing course was MKT 302: Principles of Contemporary Manipulation. I remember staring awestruck at its nameless textbook, bound in Furby skin and treated with the blood of Apple Fanboys. I can feel that book in my hands every time I catch the scent of sulfur.
At the end of my first year came my first sales presentation, wherein I had to convince a group of girl scouts to pay me to take their cookies from them. The topic in class at the time was “product positioning,” so my task was to convince the scouts that my possession of the cookies was a valuable source of word-of-mouth promotion to the rest of their market. Therefore, they should pay me for the service. After some quick reach/frequency estimates, we agreed on a CPM that, well, let’s just say that student debt is not a problem, now.
My second year brought with it another fond memory: our first corporate guest speaker. He was YoYo’s Product Manager, and he showed up in my “Fads: The Science of Commercial Compulsion” class. He explained, quite simply, that creating a fad only requires that a marketer understand how gullible humanity is, and that they have access to a data warehouse full of their market’s personal information. Then, you just make it look like cool people are already using your product. I reminisce now on his final words to us. Pulling the side of his cape in to cover his mouth, he whispered “Consumption is as stupid does.” And then he vanished in a puff of smoke.
And the rest is history. Upon graduation, world control would finally be within my grasp. More than anything else in life, I thank my Marketing education for the opportunity.