Hi! I’m Mae. (I’ve started introducing myself all the time like I have amnesia, but I’ll stop now.) This is my newsletter about marketing and ~literature~, but mostly marketing. Here we go!
If you wonder why I’m interested in marketing, same. It’s probably relevant that I’ve spent most of my adult life marketing, kindamarketing, and/or writing about marketing. I spent four years as an in-house copywriter; then I got an MFA in creative nonfiction, and wrote my thesis about how it feels to market and be marketed to. Now, I cover marketing for a brand-supported media outlet (it’s a whole thing), so my marketing coverage also functions as content marketing (also a whole thing with its own Institute).
What is marketing, anyway? I had the same question in grad school, so I audited a marketing class taught by literally Michael Jordan. (He was not the Michael Jordan, though that Michael Jordan is amazing at marketing.) Our textbook explained that marketing is “activity, institutions and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers… and society at large.”
A take! But this definition doesn’t really capture the ways marketing creates and contorts culture and people. As the newsletter progresses, I’ll work on a better definition, because I’m 30 and at this point, marketing has fundamentally shaped who I am and what I like and the physical landscape I inhabit.
This is another reason it interests me — it’s everywhere, and it’s influential, but it feels critically overlooked. Mainstream coverage of marketing usually boils down to “this is so cool!” or “this seems cool but it can’t be, because it’s selling something, and that’s BAD!”
I feel like there are other things to say. I love it when people incorporate ads into cultural criticism or profile an entire marketing agency in a lush and overwhelming way. I want to know: Where does marketing come from? How does it make people feel? Where does it end?
I’m going to try to write about stuff like that. “Try” is a key word — I am writing this with a lot of verve but no editor. Let’s keep our expectations high yet realistic!
So, to review, why am I writing a newsletter about marketing?
It’s a big part of what I’ve done all day for the past ~decade
It’s a facet of culture that gets critically overlooked sometimes
This ad really spoke to me, wow
Other reasons I’ll figure out later
Next week: a newsletter about Andrea Long Chu’s Females!