Log 003 // Humanities Marketing

Waking up and the TV’s still on. Some late-night commercial for a CD box set — just four easy payments of $19.99! I knew every word to all my favorite commercials as a kid with no money and no need for anything they were advertising. You probably didn’t have a structured settlement, nor did you need cash now…but you knew exactly who to call.

As an undergrad, I took a class called Roman Spectacle with the head of the Classics Department, Dr. Tuck. We covered the games, triumphs, theaters, and of course gladiators. Yes, it was fun watching Russell Crowe clips in a 300-level course. But we were actually watching the full apparatus of public entertainment as a political and social instrument.

Our final papers analyzed a modern American spectacle through a classical lens, exploring cultural parallels and connecting to larger belief systems beneath them. Only rule? Couldn’t write about the Super Bowl. Too obvious.

So I chose the next best thing: The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. A triumphal procession through a major city, sponsored by powerful patrons, igniting collective pride. Nothing in the parade is accidental. It constructs a narrative reflecting what America wants to believe about itself. It’s one of few nationally unifying moments.

A primary source. Uniquely American, that balances gratitude with an impending season of holiday spending.

Now with added marketing experience, it’s like I’ve zoomed out. Taking in ads and commercials in aggregate - not the individual buys. What saturated categories say about our anxieties. What desires are manufactured by different elements of culture.

Look at this year’s Super Bowl and Halftime Show. Remember how many conversations exploded just around the language Bad Bunny performed in? And the commercial right after? Both deliberate choices against our political backdrop.

And yet most of the ads were about AI. To me, that means it’s here to stay.

I can barely watch Hulu without Serena Williams trying to sell me Ro every ad break (literally need to invest in premium for my mental health).

One of our generation’s greatest athletes selling weight loss medication you can buy from your couch. We want to blame the marketing — the messenger — but we’re the ones creating the demand. We’re in the 2000s skinny swing of the pendulum, except the 2026 version comes in a bottle.

That level of saturation is a cultural stance. Something “we’ve” decided is socially acceptable to want. By the time something has marketing, the desire (or fear) already existed in the zeitgeist.

Sorry for saying zeitgeist … sometimes it’s just accurate.

The marketing-ism says you aren’t your customer. To some extent that’s true. But marketing requires the capacity to understand the underlying human emotion that precedes action. To see new signs of old desires, find new technologies serving ancient problems, hear what someone is reaching for before they’ve found the words for it.

Classics taught me that, not a dashboard.

Marketing isn’t exempt from the list of fields begging for a return to a humanities foundation. AI tools can replicate the science of language. I don’t think they can reproduce the art. How to choose words that connect, not just communicate. Rhetorical devices that earn trust on an emotional level. And human instincts to combine it all.

The tools make it easy to build something that looks like a brand. But without the art, the idea gets lost: wrong symbols, wrong connotations, wrong customer at the door.

At its best, marketing is translation.

How a brand shows people it understands what they care about.