Marketing Is a Lie? The Truth About Branding, AI & Consumer Psychology | Giuseppe Stigliano

**Giuseppe Stigliano** (0:00)
Marketing is not about making people want things. It is about making things people want.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (0:11)
Is there something called ethical marketing?

**Giuseppe Stigliano** (0:13)
I do believe so.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (0:14)
So how would you survive with ethical marketing in a world of consumerism?

**Giuseppe Stigliano** (0:22)
You talk about interacting with your customers, you say targeting, a marketing campaign. That's a poor jargon.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (0:35)
Marketers are just liars. So marketers, like, you know, no one trusts. Because the perception of marketer is to basically create this nervous anxiety in you that you need to have something.

**Giuseppe Stigliano** (0:55)
We don't buy things just for, let's say, transactional aspects, but more often than not, we buy things to tell something about ourselves to ourselves and to others.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (1:35)
Welcome to another episode of Tomorrow Today with Shekhar Natarajan. It's my incredible honor to have the marketing genius, Giuseppe Stigliano. This guy has written like three books with Philip Kotler. You know, basically has worked for three large startups. You had your own startup, and you work for like, you know, you were the CEO for three companies as well.
World-renowned speaker, amazing marketing guru, Ted Talk genius.
What else, Giuseppe? What else have I missed?

**Giuseppe Stigliano** (2:15)
You know, after this introduction, even I am curious to hear what I have to say. Tell me more.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (2:22)
So, I am really honored to have you here because marketing is on everyone's mind these days, particularly with the advent of artificial intelligence and the changing world of like content creation and content distribution, and how do you think about the brand in general.
And so, I've been researching quite a bit about you and your thought processes, and like you know, I am really, really sure that this is going to be the most exciting conversation that we're going to have for the next 90 minutes. With that, like, you know, I want to take you back to the origin days of who you are, where did you come from, what is your background, how did you get into what you got into? Just like, just get us like to that, through that phase of your life.

**Giuseppe Stigliano** (3:09)
So, I was born 45 years ago in southern Italy, in a region called Calabria. It's the very end of the boot.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (3:17)
Oh, I thought like you're 70 years old.

**Giuseppe Stigliano** (3:20)
That was in my previous life. 45, 45

**Shekhar Natarajan** (3:25)
Well, you have the wisdom of a 70 year old.

**Giuseppe Stigliano** (3:28)
I thought you were saying you look like you're 70 Okay, that's better.
So yeah, I was born in southern Italy, which is what you would you call in the middle of nowhere. That's what it is, right? So it's not Milan. It's 1,200 kilometers south of Milan.
It's not exactly where you would start doing marketing if you know what I mean. But I had the opportunity to grow up in an analog world. So that was a good thing. I remember waiting in line to make a call at a phone booth, receiving fax at the very beginning of my career. And so I guess that was part of my initial thoughts about communication, about marketing, even though I didn't know at the time. Another thing that interested me a lot back then was theater. I loved the idea of being on a stage, sharing my ideas with an audience. I didn't care about recording something and having screen or whatever other medium between me and the audience. I really liked the idea of being there with an audience. I thought I wanted to be an actor. I didn't know at the time that the reality was that my deep passion and one day mission in life was knowledge sharing. So growing up, I moved to Milan, I started studying marketing, I started working with a professor.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (4:55)
But tell me more about your parents.

**Giuseppe Stigliano** (4:57)
My parents were-

**Shekhar Natarajan** (4:58)
Your parents, your siblings.

**Giuseppe Stigliano** (4:59)
Both doctors. So I grew up in an hospital basically, because they were both working all day long basically. So I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, because of course they were working a lot.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (5:12)
But who was like inspiring you to get on the stage?

**Giuseppe Stigliano** (5:16)
So my dad as a doctor used to be also a speaker, like at conferences. And I didn't know at the time, but of course that was part of my inspiration. The theater was part of an inspiration as well, because I fell in love with the idea of being on a stage.