Marketing Is Dead, Long Live Marketing

We gather here today to mourn the death of marketing — or so we’re told. The obituaries are everywhere: “Marketing is Dead” (HBR 2012). “The data speaks for itself.” Even Wired magazine opined on the death of the advertising industry as far back as 1994.

And yet, global ad spending is forecast to reach $1 trillion in 2025. That’s a lot of money for a corpse.

So, what’s the deal? If marketing is dead, why is the world throwing away billions to beat a dead horse? Marketing didn’t die — it simply evolved. The tools and technology have changed, but the psychology of influence remains the same.

The News of my Death has been Greatly Exaggerated.

That’s what marketing would say — if marketing were a human person. To be fair, when people say “marketing is dead,” what they really mean is that traditional marketing has passed its “best-by date.” The Mad Men era of whisky-soaked pitch meetings and hackneyed slogans was doomed the moment the people got a remote — and later, a smartphone.

Back in the day, if you could buy airtime on one of the “Big Four” broadcasters — NBC, CBS, ABC, or FOX — you didn’t need to clearly understand or “find” your audience. You knew they were watching one of those four stations. All you needed was access to broadcasting execs and money. Storytelling mattered, but distribution was king.

Today, distribution has been democratized, attention is scarce, and data is king. Legacy marketing agencies decry the death of "good marketing" at the hands of influencers. Somewhere between the orthodoxy of product market fit and big data, we convinced ourselves that storytelling was optional when it’s the only thing that ever really worked.

Diamonds are Forever For a Reason

If you want proof that marketing often matters more than the product, look no further than the left hand of most engaged-to-be-married Americans.

The global diamond industry is built on a story — not scarcity, not a unique product, not intrinsic value, but a story. A century ago, De Beers had a problem: their shiny rocks were abundant and mostly useless outside of drills and saws. Then they gave the world a line that still echoes in jewelry stores today: “Diamonds are Forever.”

That slogan created an entire culture of engagement rings, proposal rituals, and a $90-billion industry — all from a message engineered in a boardroom.

That’s the power of marketing: it turns neatly arranged carbon atoms into a stand-in for complex emotions like love.

Three Myths of a Dead Industry

1. Advertising is the Whole Story: Advertising is not marketing — it’s just the loudest tool in the marketing industry. Marketing is everything that shapes perception, behavior, and belief. Marketing is the psychology of persuasion and behavior change. Advertising is the paid promotion; it is a powerful tool for marketing, but it is not the whole of marketing. This simple category error has turned a sophisticated and creative discipline into a simple and expensive numbers game. But marketing has so much more to offer.

   
   

2. Safe is Profitable: In an era in which marketers only had to get their ads on TV to get eyeballs, the only real way to screw up was to make something offensive. Executive risk aversion prompted safe creative decisions. Safe often means repeating what’s worked before. Unfortunately, safety rarely captures attention, and in 2025, audiences have an overabundance of content competing for their attention. The brands that break through the noise do so for two reasons: they are too big to ignore, or they take a risk.

   
   

3. Marketing Is Only for Selling Stuff: This one’s for the public servants: marketing is not a private-sector gimmick. Marketing uses the same psychological mechanisms behind political campaigns, social movements, and public engagement. Whether you’re asking people to vote, vaccinate, or volunteer, you’re using marketing by another name. Marketing, at its core, is persuasion wrapped in empathy. It’s understanding what someone values and aligning your message with their internal logic. That’s not manipulation — that’s communication done well. And good public service demands good communications.

   
   

Garfield Tried to Warn You

You are not immune to marketing. You may think you are, you may think your unique ability to reason protects you from manipulation. 

But consider the views you currently hold as axiomatic. Truly engage with your beliefs for a moment. Can you truly say that you came to those beliefs on your own through deep consideration of the moral and philosophical implications of those beliefs?

Might you identify with a particular political party, community group, or any other identity because someone told you a story that resonated with your lived experiences?

Every belief system, every “common sense” idea, every brand of toothpaste you buy — they’re all stories compelling enough to become “truth” in your mind. And once they do, you defend them as if you came up with them yourself.

That’s marketing - and we’re all susceptible to these marketing strategies. Because we are all human.

64,000 Years of Marketing and Counting

From cave paintings to TikTok videos, we’ve always told each other stories about what matters. We have always used the tools of our time to market our ideas. Marketing didn’t die — it just evolved.

The mediums changed. We have not. 

So long live marketing — and long live the storytellers brave enough to make meaning in a world drowning in data.