Search for a Perfect Pitch

By Richard Lacayo

No matter what everyone else may think, we say the world's oldest profession is marketing. How else can you describe a pursuit that makes an appearance in the Book of Genesis? What we mean here is the part in which the serpent sells Eve on that apple. Even granting that she was an early example of insufficient sales resistance, that was a masterpiece of promotion.

Yet despite the comfort that comes from knowing that marketing has a long pedigree, it remains something we have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it's an essential engine of capitalism--one means by which demand begets supply. But it also has something to do with fast talk and hidden persuaders. We blame it for the white noise of hype that infests our brains. We blame it for sales calls at dinnertime, an innovation that should not get any prizes.

All the same, to do what smart marketers do, to ferret out our deepest desires--sex! power! beer!--or to bond us to brand names with the kind of tribal loyalty you ordinarily find only in the Balkans, is no easy business. It's art and science, and the ingenuity it requires is something to admire. The six people we profile in this chapter of our Innovators series have taken up the tools of anthropology, mathematics and virtual reality. No subatomic particle, no stretch of the human genome has been studied as closely as you, dear 21st century consumer. And our Innovators are applying the lessons in ways you may never have imagined.

--By Richard Lacayo