As long as we live in a value-exchange based society we'll have people selling things and trying to get you to choose their offering over someone else's. Most people here on HN build things, and want people to use them in exchange for something.
I don't get the hate for marketing, over and above UX people who build nice interfaces that get you to do something since it's easy and enjoyable, or developers who create systems that get you to undertake entirely new habits.
Marketing is perhaps seen as the most disposable part of building a business ("if we just build an awesome product, everyone will just talk about it freely!!1!!1"), but I don't understand why it and the frameworks it relies on are looked down on compared to every other element of creating something that's designed to add-and-take value.
My comment was a little rude and I apologize for that. I feel like I should expand a bit on my reasoning.
The tools you've described in your post are unambiguously manipulative (sparking emotions, associating mental states with a product independently of its qualities etc.). Based on this I'm wondering whether there are any marketing frameworks that don't directly rely on one aspect of human psychological weakness instead of simply telling a customer what the product does. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in this regard.
Of course, it's hard to blame advertisers for doing this, because the incentives are there. It works tremendously well, and I am deeply vulnerable to it myself. Despite this, I can't help but feel distress that the working life of so many smart people is dedicated to inserting needs in other's minds. The acronyms are the cherry on top: the manipulation is so routine that it is parceled with buzzwords, as the other poster noticed.
On a more global scale, it highlights a deeper problem. The practices of advertising today are already lightly dystopian if contrasted with people's expectations of the world a few decades past: massive data-gathering, extremely advanced and detailed A/B testing and optimization, devices providing identification info at all times and in all places, psychological experiments such as those tested by Facebook... etc. Based on these developments and on the precedent of technology often being applied in a deeply unethical way, it's no longer impossible to imagine that it will get worse, possibly even unimaginably worse. Heck, if there were a way for people to insert ads directly into a person's mind should the opportunity I have no doubt that it would become an acceptable practice after a while. We already have people reduced to selling their plasma. Of course, this is all very speculative and it maybe won't work out this way, but I'm not holding my breath.
I do agree that marketing is not the only culprit here, just the one most likely to evoke an epidermic reaction.
I agree with the notion that it's manipulation, however, also in the context that almost all businesses are - vast swathes of the economy literally only exist to get people to do things they don't need to, and drawing a line through marketing over and above other elements always hurts since it's an easy target but not detached from other elements doing the same.
You're right that most marketing relies on human psychology, but I wouldn't call it weakness per se, it's the same areas that are influenced by all kinds of storytelling (whether that's film, fiction or marcomms).
Diving deeper, there's also a lot of "marketing" in nature, we look at the evolution of plants and animals whereby entire species have developed based on generating emotions and actions in other animals. Perhaps a tenuous connection :) but I always find it holds valid for me, we're designed to look for emotional triggers to influence what we do. Whether utilising these is "taking advantage" or not is where that personal interpretation comes in.
I'd also point out that advertising is a subset of marketing, but not all of it, it's probably the area that's most explicit in its intentions though, but things like content marketing are designed to influence you as much, whilst being more subversive about it.
I don't hate marketing per se but, nowadays, I am frequently left with an uncomfortable internal voice after making a purchase that asks "Is this really the choice that I wanted/needed or is it just that the I let the company with the best marketing manipulate me into buying this particular choice?"
I agree with you, and I don't necessarily agree with the parent, but I understand where they're coming from because I felt that way in the past.
"Marketing is evil" worldview aside, the idea that manipulating human behavior can be reduced to a three-letter acronym, and that it can be so formulaic and still be so effective is I think what people find off-putting.
It just strikes me as odd when people are happy with things like UX (designing something to create a feeling in order to convince a person and to get them comfortable undertaking the action you want them to. Formulaic in the sense there's a whole industry around "best practice"), or A/B testing (covert science experiments on real people to design systems to increase the likelihood of similar humans taking the action you want. Similarly so.).
And yet marketing, because it's perceived as being detached from the product (which it really isn't) is the bad actor because it's explicit and transparent about its goal. Amuses me as much as it frustrates.
I don't get the hate for marketing, over and above UX people who build nice interfaces that get you to do something since it's easy and enjoyable, or developers who create systems that get you to undertake entirely new habits.
Marketing is perhaps seen as the most disposable part of building a business ("if we just build an awesome product, everyone will just talk about it freely!!1!!1"), but I don't understand why it and the frameworks it relies on are looked down on compared to every other element of creating something that's designed to add-and-take value.