How are ideas sold?
The answer to that question is the key to influencing the world. It’s how the popular kids in school sustain their status; how parents, teachers and peer groups affect the behavior of children; how Osama bin Laden draws new recruits into al Qaeda; how Apple launches new products. Ideas succeed not by being good or bad, but by being sold effectively.
In a world where people break into tribes based on their identification with a brand or product, marketing bleeds into politics, law, and national security. Skilled marketers will be anthropologists and social network theorists, tracking how people group and label themselves. They’ll be masters of cultural forensics, able to dissect the origins and impact of any product or campaign.
As it becomes easier and easier for anyone on earth to communicate with anyone (and everyone) else, it’s increasingly important to understand the epidemiology of ideas. Students of marketing will learn the nuances of information infection: how to distinguish promotion from presentation, how to trace messages to their source. They’ll learn to recognize the patterns of information flow, and spot the moment when an idea’s reception flips from hype to backlash. And they’ll explore the ethics of marketing, the role that accuracy and privacy play in the spread of ideas.
Whether or not they know it, everyone practices marketing. But not everybody does it well. Those who do wield a powerful advantage.
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