Consider the famous question posed by Dr. George Berkeley in the 1600s: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Think about that for a moment and now consider a variation of this question tailored to the workplace: if a positive outcome happens and no customer is around to witness it, did the customer get any value?
Theological motivations for the original question aside, the answer is emphatically no.
If Amazon didn’t show customers that a product “was: $10” and “with deal: $8” on their product pages, customers wouldn’t know they were saving money by buying on Amazon.
If car dealerships quietly baked rebates into the asking price of a vehicle instead of explicitly offering a rebate, the customer probably wouldn’t see a deal worth seizing and, therefore, might be less likely to buy.
Communication mediates value. Without it, people are none the wiser.
And with that, a toast to marketing!
Not the Flower
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