Le marketing : un pouvoir séducteur - Semaine de la Pop Philosophie

Thibault Le Texier, economic historian Benoît Heilbrunn, marketing professor Conversation with arts theorist Mathieu Garling

Thibault Le Texier

The power to seduce, from marketing to management

The customer is king, we often hear. Consumer society is not a dictatorship; it is an amusement park. Marketing is not about coercing or imposing. It proposes, persuades, encourages, stimulates and influences. Marketing is neither a top-down nor an oppressive power; on the contrary, it relies on consent, adherence and seduction. “Marketing is the philosophical alternative to coercion,” summarizes Philip Kotler, the pope of modern marketing. But marketing nonetheless exercises power, whose particular mechanisms we will examine.

Management, on the other hand, resembles a dictatorship. Employees are required to obey by their employment contracts, subject to bosses, governed by their job descriptions and various regulations, and constantly threatened with dismissal or sanctions. But this does not mean that management should not also be seductive, particularly when faced with a new generation that often seeks personal fulfillment through work.