You don’t build a thriving economy by just making better stuff. You build it by getting people to believe in better stuff.
And that? That’s marketing.
Not the buzzword bingo kind. Not the “we need a new logo” kind. I’m talking about the real thing—the engine of human behavior change. The force that makes people care, act, and open their wallets.
Deirdre McCloskey—Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and one of the sharpest minds in economics—says 25% of our economy is just… "sweet talk." Persuasion. Influence. The magic of convincing someone to try something new.
Let that sink in. A quarter of the economy is built on marketing—and nobody’s talking about it. We obsess over innovation, productivity, investment, and AI (obviously). But the part where people actually buy in? Where new ideas become new markets?
That’s marketing. That’s growth. That’s the spark.
And we treat it like a decoration.
We wait until the product is built, the pricing is set, and everything is locked…Then we yell down the hallway: “Hey, can you make this look good?”
No.
Marketing isn’t window dressing. It’s not the cherry on top. It’s the gas in the tank. The story that scales. The reason people give a damn.
Want to know why some ideas soar and others stall?
Spoiler. It’s not because one had better tech.
It’s because one had better narrative.
Marketing turns whispers into movements. It gives ideas momentum. It builds desire where there was none.
And the wildest part?
We’re still acting like it’s optional. Immaterial. And doesn't reeeeaaalllly matter. Like we can optimize our brand into someone else’s template and call it growth.
Nope.
We can’t Data Scientist our way to growth.
It lives in emotion. It lives in belief. It lives in the decision to bet on something that doesn’t have a guaranteed ROI yet—but could change the game.
That’s what real marketing does.
It doesn’t follow trends. It creates markets. It doesn’t just sell. It shifts culture. It doesn’t wait for permission. It starts the conversation.
So here’s my take. If you want to grow your business, your category, or hell—the entire market economy—stop treating marketing like it’s an expense.
Start treating it like what it actually is. The most underutilized growth engine on the planet.
