Marketing is, broadly speaking, the promotion of a product to make it appear more popular and attractive than its competition. To achieve this, those people - call them A - who wish to sell their product to the relevant market sector - call them B - employ a Marketing Agency - call them C. C attempts to convince both A and B of the product's outstanding merits, without having any previous knowledge of the product or its market.

This marketing process is effected, for the most part, through clever manipulation of advertising media, such as television, newsprint, magazines, and, more recently, the Internet. Bright colours combined with beautiful images of an ideal existence are presented by highly attractive and talented individuals, who are themselves being marketed at the very same time to promote a feeling of confidence and desirability. This double effect is itself quite interesting. Where the phrase 'All actions cause an equal and opposite reaction' is commonplace in the real world, marketing manages to append '...except in marketing, where all actions cause the desired reaction, and then create a brand new action which is even simpler, quicker and cheaper than the original one.'

Apart from learning to put up with it, the best ways to deal with marketing departments are:

• To live in a dark cave in complete isolation from the rest of society, or
• To become the best marketing company in the world and attempt to defeat the system from within.

Many people have applied themselves to the second of these, and were so successful in their attempts that they spent the rest of their lives in terrible 'Marketing Wars' with other agencies, fighting over who was going to defeat the system in the most impressive manner, and who was going to win all the major awards.

For further reading on Marketing Agencies, read The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard. This book attempts to expose the senility of Marketing by shamelessly and ironically promoting itself from within its own pages, thus making its very existence an elegant proof of the theories it puts forward.