On episode 15, creative director and brand strategist Rachael Kay Albers said something that I have been turning over and over in my mind since:

Marketing artificially accelerates the pace of human relationships.

As soon as I heard her say that, something started to click for me about why therapists tend to dislike marketing, and it centers around the concept of artificiality.

We see artificiality as phony or fake, as standing in opposition to authenticity. And therapists love to see ourselves as being driven by authenticity. We want to get under the external layers and into the real, raw stuff. It’s what we do.

It’s not exactly a revelation that the primary complaint I hear from therapists about marketing is that it feels fake or superficial or inauthentic.

But Rachael’s comment made me realize it goes deeper than that. And it can’t be remedied by telling us to just be authentic or ethical or don’t be a slime ball and overpromise results.

What’s really happening is that we accurately perceive that marketing manipulates and speeds up the pace of our relationships with our clients. And we do not like that.

But the more I think about it, the more I ask myself, aren’t we doing that anyway by the very nature of the work we do? Isn’t there a layer of artifice inherent and necessary to the work that we do?