If you don’t reach people to tell them what you have to offer, no one will ever find you.
If I didn't intrusively steal people's limited time and attention to force my manipulative product spam right into their faces, I might not get what I want, therefore it's ok for me to do that - the ends justify the means.
I didn't mention marketing. Nor did the sentence I quoted. If you mean:
advertising: n. The activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media.
marketing: n. The activities required by a producer to sell his products, including advertising,
then my complaint applies. Pushing information about your product into my face is both advertising and marketing.
If you mean "marketing: n. The act or process of buying and selling in a market." then your comment is unrelated, because neither I nor the person I replied to were talking about other people trading between themselves.
"Pushing information about your product" is only marketing to the extent that advertising is marketing. "The activities required by a producer to sell his products," includes a lot of stuff that isn't pushy at all. That's exactly what I'm talking about. You think you're describing marketing, but you're actually describing only advertising.
For example, Hacker News is absolutely a marketing vehicle for Y Combinator. Would you say that they "intrusively steal people's limited time and attention to force my manipulative product spam right into their faces"? You choose to come here, and in doing so, it elevates the brand of Y Combinator in your mind and in the world.
If I didn't intrusively steal people's limited time and attention to force my manipulative product spam right into their faces, I might not get what I want, therefore it's ok for me to do that - the ends justify the means.