Marketer's Dilemma

It was the summer before my senior year at Michigan State and I was 90% of the way through my internship with a major US retailer.

My last project.
Merchandising in toys.

The objective?
Analyze sales data against the current merchandising strategy in toys and recommend ways to improve revenue through product placement.

Seemed harmless.
But as I started to dive in I realized what I was being asked to do. To figure out ways to manipulate the buying decisions of children. All in the name of profit.

The hypothesis on the table?

Move the Barbie accessories [higher margin] to a lower shelf and move the Barbie’s themselves [lower margin] higher. Why? So that the higher-margin goods would be within reach of the little children, hence increasing the margin of the items in their parent’s cart.

There’s another layer here. Which is the shitstorm of a life that I was living at the time.

After crashing to a miserable 83 pounds the previous semester, I finally looked in the mirror and admitted that I was experiencing a mental health crisis which presented itself in the form of an eating disorder.

I was so raw.
Fragile.
And, pissed off.
At myself.
The media.
And the world, for not giving me better tools.

As you might suspect this little Barbie project sent me into a complete downward spiral. And I’m not talking about the kind of spiral where you go home, drink it over, and bitch to your friends.

I sent it.
Leveraging information available to me through the organizational databases I started to pull together a report, correlating the rise in Barbie sales and other image-affirming toys at this specific retailer to the rise of eating disorders in American teens.

The analysis was full of holes, but it didn’t matter.
It was directional.
Intended to be thought-provoking.

I packaged up the data, along with a manifesto, and had two specific recipients in mind – the CEO and the CHRO.

While many of my fellow interns spent the summer laser-focused on their projects and locating the best happy hours, I had a different agenda. Innately curious, I used any free time to do informational interviews with any leader who agreed to sit with me. I met with Directors and VPs across Marketing, Communications, Community, and Creative. 1) I recommend all interns allocate time for this and 2) this meant that I had gotten to know the EAs pretty well.

So, when I asked to hand deliver a “document” to the executive floor, they agreed.

Good news, they read it.
Bad news, they didn’t value the effort and I was asked not to seek further employment at the company ever again #mutual. I also got firm feedback from my advisors back at Michigan State as I was in a very public position within the student body and well, news had traveled fast.

Looking back I feel mixed about it.
Sometimes I wonder if I was in the wrong, to the extent they told me I was.
Other times I get fixated on the naivety of my twenty-year-old self and how silly she was to think she could influence the corporate giants as a GD intern.

But mostly I feel proud of her for standing up for something that she believed in and for being able to sniff out bull shit before she stepped in it.

So why am I telling you all of this now?

Well, I’m looking down the aisle of my tech marketing career, and in the wave of AI, an increasingly competitive attention economy, and a deeply injured democracy — I feel like I’m facing many of the same moral dilemmas as my twenty-year-old self.

Do I manipulate the inventory and collect my paycheck?
Or do I march up to the C-suite and deliver my manifesto?

Marketing is one of those fields that will always toe a fine line between good and evil. On one side you’re helping people find solutions that can better their lives.
On the other, you’re often influencing behavior in the name of profits.
It’s easy to get caught up. Because marketers are creatives. They are natural problem solvers. They’re curious. And like any good craft when you invest yourself fully sometimes you lose sight of the world around you.

While I kicked off my career with a bang and have always prided myself on being “customer-centric”, I wouldn’t say I’ve remained a marketing vigilante. I made decisions my twenty-year-old self would disown me for. I’ve contributed to a polluted internet and other sources of overwhelm that are deeply impacting the human experience. I’ve had to make hard decisions around people, in the name of protecting the bottom lines of companies.

“It’s business”, they say.

Maybe.

It’s also a deep dilemma.
And I hope that as marketers we continue to feel it so that we never stop contemplating our choices.

AI is moving quickly.
Automation can now be scaled into nearly every corner of your GTM strategy.
The line between influence and manipulation is getting more blurry than ever.

When I look at some of the playbooks that are unfolding right before our eyes,
I want nothing to do with them.

Go ahead, compete for eyeballs.
Chase those upper funnel metrics.
Burn that VC cash.

I’ll be over here, writing manifestos and focusing on the long game.
Brands that people trust.
Products that deliver on their promise.
Stories worth listening to.