No matter where or what, there are makers, takers and fakers
-Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
For too long marketers have been, or have been seen as, fakers and takers, not makers.
Television has brought us Mad Men: fakers who create alternate realities, where family life is as wholesome and happy as slides projected from a Kodak carousel and where all the women are buxom blonds in silver shorts, high heels and a Maidenform bra. In their reality, the Mad Men sleep around, drink like fish and ignore their families. This is the marketer as image maker, telling fake stories with little basis in reality.