Excerpted from Average is Over by Tyler Cowen:

“Despite all the talk about STEM fields, I see marketing as the seminal sector for our future economy…. 

“It sounds a little silly, but making high earners feel better in just about every part of their lives will be a major source of job growth in the future. At some point it is hard to sell more physical stuff to high earners, yet there is usually just a bit more room to make them feel better. Better about the world. Better about themselves. Better about what they have achieved.”

The caveat here: the best marketers probably wouldn’t call themselves marketers. Similarly,  “When self-promotion is done right, it never looks like self-promotion.”

I’ve literally never heard anyone say, “I want to be marketed to today.” Even if they do want to be sold on something, even if they want to take in new information to believe in something, this isn’t something they’re always explicitly looking for. 

Instead, people are bored, stressed, and confused, amongst other things.

Marketing is the art and skill of making things matter, and that means meeting people where they are, not where you want them to be.