First this post started as a question (How evil is marketing), but after some review, I already could put things more in perspective…this thread is more of a observation-thread now 
Also I came up with an interesting way to look at things from a gunas-perspective.
In a way one could create a relationship between vikalpa(fantasy) & followers, and rajas(activity) & marketing.
[B]DISCLAIMER[/B]: I’m not a marketeer in any way, but I think, in the end, everybody is a marketeer of ideas
[B]WARNING[/B]: enthousiasm and a text written by a non-english speaker can be found below
There’s no such thing as ‘evil’ marketing
I guess we all agree that marketing moves good and bad ideas forward, even when they are marketed in a way which promotes incorrect knowledge, or is shadowsupported by bad intentions.
(Example: in theory it could be possible to become advanced in yoga, while being introduced to yoga by reading a yoga-flyer from a yogastudio which was purely a cashcow of businessmen who’ve never practiced yoga at all).
In personal observations of ‘my reality’, I’ve discovered (and am still discovering) that I’ve lived with lots of incorrect knowledge, like most of us, mostly powered by fantasy, marketed by society and parents.
This circus already starts from childhood: we are attacked by ideas, and after developing a shield for this, we have to clean up the mess of your past distorted perceptions.
Unfortunately almost nobody receives Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra’s at an early age, to get a realistic view on reality/fantasy and knowledge.
I also discovered a shadowmarket in the art-scene, its very unlikely to find out new art without a market.
My quest in the art-scene is in parallel with Surya Deva’s thread “[I]Commercialization of Yoga: Misleading and false promises[/I]”.
Commercialization of Arts
Every artist, for example, will soon or later find out that there is no such thing as an “artist” vs “normal person”, “being special” vs “being unspecial”, or “creative people” vs “people with dayjobs”, even though artists were always presented like that ([I]“Mozart was a genious, now THAT’s an artist!”[/I]).
My personal experience is, that within artscenes this ideoligy is promoted severely. It is trying to promote the idea of artists being special individuals (backed up by enthousiast followers who support this illusion). Then art, can be seen as a religions with gurus as well: it is an unspoken agreement to feed a shared illusion/seperation between sender/receiver, just like between some gurus and seekers.
However, when the trends change, the artist needs to change his art as well, because else they will lose followers. These days, with the saturation of markets, many followers will then drop their guru (“2 years ago he was doing amazing stuff…now Im not really impressed anymore”), and focus on new material from another guru.
If one really makes effort to find out how deep this rabbit-hole is, it always ends up with the phenomenon called “market”, no matter how creative or special you are.
I’ve seen this in other fields as well, everything which contains fantasy, receives shadowsupport from a market. In saturated markets there will always be false prophets which try to gain followers by spreading stories of how you can become succesfull like them (which is based on incorrect knowledge, or a flawn, overdone, outdated moment in history).
[INDENT][B]Example[/B]: You never hear a artist talk about marketing in interviews, while with many artists that topic occupies 90% of their thoughts & conversations with their team. They will not tell “[I]Well, first of all, I would like to tell everybody that the reason I do this interview, is because my marketingstaff set me up for this, because they negiotated that I could promote my website, so I can continue this lifestyle, which has nothing to do with the art what I started back in the days[/I]”. Instead you will hear a romantic story which makes kids run to the shops and buy an album and a new guitar etc
If an artist gets too attached to his lifestyle, soon or later he has to give up his art.
The artists knows it, the team knows it, yet it is often a taboo.
[/INDENT]
This raises the question: [B]Is marketing inevitable?[/B]
My current view of putting things in perspective:
Vikalpa(fantasy) and followers
[B]Example[/B]:
If I’m an artist, I want to have an macbook pro, because apple is for creative people.
When I have great experiences, I will recommend everybody that they should buy apple stuff, because this would re-confirm my decision of the past.
In my opinion, when people accept a certain fantasy and become consumers, they agree with a powerstructure which demands authority over them.
They accept those particular gunas as absolute truth for the time being, while not being able to see the composition.
If the person does not review this agreement at a later point in time (“Hey I’m not only an artist, Im also an scientist and a father…why should I recommend apple to everybody!”), he is prone to become close-minded blinded followship.
Gunas, Rajas=marketing, Tamas=product
[B]Rajas[/B]: Moves/Exploits Tamas. When there is no marketing, nothing moves. You gain more interest by people with a good story which gives away a fantasy, then just cold facts of a product.
[B]Tamas[/B]: solid product/service. If you can share something which other people can touch/hear/see/feel or do, it will do nothing by itself, it will just sit somewhere (on somebody’s harddrive, or an empty yoga studio).
[B]Sattva[/B]: defines a balance between Rajas & Tamas, the doorway to make the idea of exploiter and productmaker accessible for other humans. Tamas is their tool, and their future desire is to become that Rajas in the future.
Conclusion
Fantasy isnt bad nor good, its a necessity to move forward.
The interesting thing I think is, that people can be attracted (rajas) by fantasies, which enable them to see themselves see the fantasy, see the factual (tamas), which breaks the agreement between themselves and the fantasy (rajas, tamas, sattva becomes visible), so they can move on focusing on demystifying remaining fantasies.
Therefore, there is no such thing as indulging in fantasy (vikalpa) which could lead to incorrect knowledge. Because the fantasy (usually) will always lead the person to correct knowledge soon or later (as described above).