Through my most recent ~3-4 contracts I've come to confidently realize something I'd always suspected: companies that are in a market where advertising and marketing are just expected when comparing what competitors do is the majority of reason why so many dollars are budgeted in that direction. I don't complain to anybody who has a say in my workload or paycheck, of course, but I often find myself conversing with peers about how ridiculous it all seems and feels. That conversation rarely changes, either.
Then getting into the amount of money allocated when it comes to "Keeping Up with the Joneses" for companies competing in pharma, healthcare, or any health related field really racks my brain, especially with pharma. In the United States there is no way to purchase pharmaceuticals online. We aren't making any e-Commerce-type products. The target audience is being fed information that looks better suited for scientists, doctors, and lawyers as opposed to who we and our customers imagine / intend. At some point it feels like it's being created to cover asses more than help sell product. I see things like case studies and the like but I imagine that even those are flubbed in order to mask the truth: nobody really knows if the work we do or the end result our customers seek is moving the meter in any direction at all.
> The target audience is being fed information that looks better suited for scientists, doctors, and lawyers as opposed to who we and our customers imagine / intend.
That's because they intend for you to go to a pill mill, and demand an 'as seen on TV' prescription.
The entire system needs to be torn out, root and stem.
> Through my most recent ~3-4 contracts I've come to confidently realize something I'd always suspected: companies that are in a market where advertising and marketing are just expected when comparing what competitors do is the majority of reason why so many dollars are budgeted in that direction. I don't complain to anybody who has a say in my workload or paycheck, of course, but I often find myself conversing with peers about how ridiculous it all seems and feels. That conversation rarely changes, either.
Well, if marketing in a given field is genuinely a waste of money then eventually a competitor should be able to enter the field and beat the incumbents by spending less on marketing. There are some fields where the cheap generics win out, but there are others where they don't.
The efficient market hypothesis kind of falls over in the real world, though. There's _many_ fields where it isn't trivial or even possible for new competitors to just arise from nothing.
Then getting into the amount of money allocated when it comes to "Keeping Up with the Joneses" for companies competing in pharma, healthcare, or any health related field really racks my brain, especially with pharma. In the United States there is no way to purchase pharmaceuticals online. We aren't making any e-Commerce-type products. The target audience is being fed information that looks better suited for scientists, doctors, and lawyers as opposed to who we and our customers imagine / intend. At some point it feels like it's being created to cover asses more than help sell product. I see things like case studies and the like but I imagine that even those are flubbed in order to mask the truth: nobody really knows if the work we do or the end result our customers seek is moving the meter in any direction at all.