To understand what's good marketing and what's bad marketing watch the rent-seekers

I'm a marketer. Got all the badges. Used to have a big job telling folk how to to it. And I'm here to remind you that there's two sorts of marketing - the good sort that's about a conversation with consumers so we can meet their needs (and maybe prompt them towards something they'd not thought about) and the bad sort that's about persuading authorities to fix the market so as to allow the client a temporary monopoly or other unfair advantage.

Of course, dear reader, I did the first sort and got plenty of flak for doing so. "Where did you get my name and address", "you're manipulating people with your clever personalisation", and "these profiling systems are exploiting people's personal data". But at no point did I collect, analyse or otherwise use data for any other purpose than to make my advertising and marketing pound stretch a little further - I just wanted to sell you what we'd got in the warehouse.

The bad marketing doesn't get the same criticism, we say little or nothing when the farmers' union lobbies for protectionism or the steel companies rant about 'unfair dumping'. Yet these businesses want to fix the market so as to profit - and that profit comes at your and my expense. It's like this:

Yet lobbying requires resources: the building and office supplies used by lobbyists, the fuel used to ferry lobbyists to and fro in their privilege-seeking efforts, but mostly the time and effort of the lobbyists themselves. And the greater the expected benefit of securing a special privilege, the greater is the amount of resources those in search of such privileges will use in that search. Such resource expenditures are beneficial to the rent-seekers themselves, for these expenditures increase these rent-seekers’ prospects of actually securing the sought-after special privileges that yield rents (that is, excess profits). But from society’s perspective these expenditures are wasteful: the building used to house lawyers who seek rents for their clients is not available to be used for genuinely productive activities (such as serving as office space for tech start-ups, or for lawyers who specialize in helping commercial clients write better contracts).

For lawyers in Don Boudreaux's screed you could insert 'lobbyists', 'PR Agencies', 'Public Affairs Consultants' and a host of other titles all dedicated to the job of getting politicians and bureaucrats to fix markets to the benefit of these agents' clients or employers.

So next time someone has a go at people like me - the good marketers who just use data and information to get you better products and services - point to the lobbyists and ask when that will stop. That is corporate welfare, market fixing and it happens at our cost - Boudreaux gives one example:

I have no idea what Mr. Stohr is paid. So let’s low-ball it – I mean really low-ball it: let’s assume that he’s paid a mere $100,000 annually. If so, then at least $33,333 worth of valuable resources – Mr. Stohr’s time, effort, and creativity – are spent simply trying to maintain that which ought not be maintained, namely, subsidies – a special privilege – for American aircraft manufacturers.

Multiply this a thousand - maybe ten thousand - times just for the USA and you see the extent to which the brilliance of us marketers is turned to the dark side promoting the market-fixing interests of large corporations, labour unions and NGOs. And then the same for every country on earth, the cost of lobbying and those fixed markets to us ordinary consumers is immense. If you want a campaign that will really change the world - put an end to rent-seeking driven by the lobby and by the avarice, the ignorance of politicians.

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Oh no, we're not lobbyists...say lobbyists for the 'third sector'

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Acevo and NCVO (see how I slip so sweetly into the acronyms of lobbying - the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary organisations and the National Council of Voluntary Organisations) are twitching at the prospect of a lobbying register and its 'unintended consequences':

The chief executives body Acevo and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations have written a joint letter to Nick Hurd, the Minister for Civil Society, to ask for a round-table discussion about the possible "unintended consequences" of a proposed new register of lobbyists for charities.

So what are the worries?

In the letter, Sir Stephen Bubb, chief executive of Acevo, and Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of the NCVO, said they wanted to ensure that any register "does not unintentionally prevent, impede or dissuade charities from doing the vital work they do in informing government policy".

That would be lobbying, no?

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You might as well try to train the rainstorm - thoughts on lobbying

OK so, following the latest example of how “lobbyists” capture ministers, the chatterati’s latest idea is to do something about that lobbying:

Labour's shadow cabinet office minister Gareth Thomas said: "David Cameron has still not introduced the compulsory register of lobbyists he promised.

"In the wake of the Adam Werritty and Atlantic Bridge activities it is now essential we have greater transparency.

"The government should bring forward as a matter of urgency plans for a compulsory register of lobbyists with records being kept of meetings between lobbyists and ministers."

And everyone nods sagely, the government promise to ‘consider’ such a register and the chitter-chatter of political aficionados gently shifts into a purring sound as everyone agrees with everyone else about the need to control lobbying.

What nobody asks however – not a soul – is what exactly we mean by the term “lobbyist”? Do we just mean that relatively small group of people who earn a living brokering access to decision-makers on behalf of fee-paying clients? Or do we need to encompass a far broader group including all those in-house public affairs teams, for example?

Or should we just give up. After all, seeking to control to exploiting of access to decision-makers in a modern democracy where over half of all the money earned is spent by the government is a tougher task that herding recalcitrant felines – more akin to training the rainstorm.

Regardless of the number of registers, licences and other bureaucratic controls, the lobbying of decision-makers will continue, access will be brokered for favours and, in each season, some scandal or other will rear its head – occasionally ending in a resignation or other such juicy delight.

The truth of the matter is that is suits large organisations - whether business, charity, trade union or industrial association - to invest their marketing pounds in influencing the decisions of government. There is no doubt that such a strategy deliver a far better return for shareholders, trustees and members than does the more orthodox search for advantage through persuasion.

We may get a register of lobbyists and lobby organisations – it may help a little. But let’s not kid ourselves that the hydra of political favour broking will die – the lobby will reform, grow new heads, adopt a different name and find different ways to inveigle its way into the heart of the political system.

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