Grass-roots Reverse Advertising

Advertising and marketing often make my skin crawl.  There definitely exists a need for companies producing a product or a valuable service to connect with those who value and will consume the product or service.  Consumers want to know the pros and cons, the specs, of different competing products so that they can apply their own utility function to the list of options and procure the one that maximizes their utility. 

Unless a business is a clear winner for most people, however, businesses don't want that.  Businesses want people to consume their product or service regardless of its relative merits in comparison with competing businesses.  This is not to say that they are entirely greedy and corrupt, but it's rational and expected for them to act out of self-interest.  Therefore, they need to make consumers aware of their product and possibly convince consumers to change their utility function so that the offered product is a winner: convince consumers that they should really value your product's strengths and not care about your product's weakness.  Alternatively they need to obfuscate the true nature of the product (hide the weakness and mislead about the strengths) so that consumers will choose it.

If a marketing company is hired to convince people to buy something they don't need or that isn't the best way to fill their need, then it feels like the marketing company has been hired to deceive.  It feels like "Search Engine Optimization" businesses and advertising campaigns are not helping consumers.  That's because the consumer hasn't hired them.  The business hired them and the business only has money to continue paying them if they can convince consumers to give that money to the business.

There needs to be a way to remove the incentive to deceive, decrease the cost of connecting with consumers, and increase the incentive to make better products.  I'm reluctant to ever consider "switching to Geico for my insurance" because I hear their name much too often.  They can't possibly be spending enough money on providing me good insurance because they spend so much on advertising.  Too much of my premium would be going toward animating a lizard with an accent and buying air time instead of rapidly and satisfactorily settling claims. 

There needs to be an organization or group of organizations dedicated to providing the truth without spin.  We need a way to see the merits and drawbacks of products and services in a way that benefits consumers.