Marketing is neither good or bad, it depends on the business you are in.

This tale is in fact not a tale, its real, a real story to think about, I just called it a tale, because the subject is so incorporated in our daily use, that no one will actually think about it.

Any industry who wants to succeed with a product or brand need customers.
To have informed people who know about yourt products, you need to advertise and get the word out about you, your product, service, etc.

So far so good, any business does advertise in some way or the other, where´s the point?

The difference between a marketing strategy and plain advertising is the capability to sell people stuff they don´t need (or not yet).

Here´s a little story to illustrate that:

"Wilkinson Sword is a company that started out 1722 by manufacturing swords, gardening tools and razors, founded by Henry Nock, still known for its wide range of razors and blades.

When they introduced the "Classic" razor with it´s single blade back in the day, actually the work was done and no one would ever need to buy anything else, except for some new blades every now and then...

The Classic one-blader had just one problem, or better said the company soon found out that this concept wouldn´t work in the long run to make their business safe. In order to use more blades you can buy shaving cream, which has a significant impact on making the blades dull, but that does only work to some extent.

They had to find a way to make people buy more blades and more razors in order to make their business work. The two bladers and protector lines came in to make people believe there´s more safety in for them.

The whole safety aspect is questionable for most users as also the use of shaving cream, but people buy what they believe is real."

I believe that a ph-neutral shampoo keeps blades longer sharp and I only buy blades one time a year, and trust me I have a bad feeling about that, because the company doesn´t make much money from me, except the 6,99 € a year. But I know many fall for their story and keep the company alive and improving on futuristic designed  multiple-bladers, which is a good thing! The worst that can happen is that the Classic razor will vanish (and the blades with it) But I believe that 6,99 € multiplied by a million of users worldwide still makes a reasonable sale in the stats to make them kick it off, otherwise they´d have done so ages ago.

This story is a display of success and I think for many, the two-bladers or shaving cream is necessary due to skin problems or the likes, no question. The point is that you can definitly change the market if you know the demand and how to supply. Sometimes the way how to supply something can turn into a demand, like apple experienced with the iphone, when they introduced it first in June 2007.

As artist or illustrator I clearly found inspiration-marketing a nice way to make people imagine what I´m capable of, even if I didn´t do something like they imagined before. What they´ve seen made them think ahead, and that is what inspiration marketing is about. Finding the "just-right-clients" can make that happen.

I hope this was inspirational to you, let me know in a comment.