Marketing, in its broadest sense, has been pithily defined as "meeting needs, profitably". This stands in stark contrast to most people's (mis-)understanding of marketing as synonymous with advertising, when in truth, this is merely synecdoche, and advertising is in many cases simply the most obvious outward indication that there is a marketing plan at work behind the scenes.

Personally, I have been fascinated by advertising for years - certainly since I first attended a version of the London International Advertising Awards that was open to the public in my early teens - and in marketing as a discipline since I read the widely-despised (by the Apple faithful, anyway) John Sculley's "Odyssey". (These days, you're more likely to find me reading the excellent Kotler, but Odyssey was what clued me in)

So, when I got the opportunity to make the transition from technical pre-sales to marketing, I jumped at the chance, and now that I've been paddling in the shallow end of marketing for a while, I've decided I'd like to wade out a little further, maybe do a little snorkelling, that sort of thing.

Why has this all fascinated me for so long and why do I bring this up now? Well this article in Salon that I was recently able to I recently managed to StumbleUpon! confirmed what I had long suspected - that marketing in general, and advertising in particular, are all about messing with people's heads.