Marketing, Sales, and Advertising Turned an Ordinary Pleasure Into an Identity Performance
I come to this subject with a certain inherited suspicion.
My uncle spent his professional life in marketing and advertising and rose to vice president at J. Walter Thompson, one of the largest advertising agencies in the country. He understood the machinery because he worked inside it, succeeded inside it, and made a very good living inside it. So when someone like that tells you something is bullshit, that is not crankiness. That is expert testimony.
He did not think marketing itself was bullshit. That would be too simple, and it would also be wrong. Proper marketing has a legitimate purpose. A product exists. It does something. It solves a problem, serves a need, fills a gap, improves a process, or gives people something they already have reason to want. The job of marketing is to find those people.
Who needs this? Where are they? How do they learn about new products? Where do they shop? What problem does this solve for them?
That’s marketing.
If someone invents a lawnmower that cuts right up to the edge so the homeowner does not need to use an edger afterward, that is a real product solving a real problem. Now the job is to find the market. Maybe the early adopters read Popular Mechanics. Maybe it belongs in Sears, where people can see it demonstrated.
That’s not bullshit. That’s real work.
The bullshit begins when the process gets turned ass-backwards. Instead of starting with a real problem and finding the people who have it, the advertiser starts by manufacturing the problem. The customer is made to feel incomplete, inadequate, unfashionable, unsophisticated, unsafe, unsuccessful, unattractive, or behind the curve. Then the product appears as the solution.
A real product solves a real problem. Bullshit is a solution looking for a problem.
Coffee is a very good place to start.
There was a time when coffee was just part of ordinary life. It accompanied breakfast. It came with dessert. It sat on diner counters. It lived in office pots, police stations, business meetings, insurance agencies, auto repair waiting rooms, and family kitchens. Someone came over, and you offered coffee. Someone sat down for a meeting, and coffee appeared. You waited for your car, and there was usually a pot somewhere. You ordered something at a diner, and coffee refills were part of the atmosphere.
Coffee was not the event. It helped the event last a little longer.
It was a courtesy. A pleasantry. A small act of civility. Sometimes it was cheap. Sometimes it came with the meal. Sometimes it was just free.
That is very significant.
Because somewhere along the way, that small courtesy became a revenue stream.
Free coffee became paid coffee with free refills. Paid coffee with free refills became paid coffee without refills. Then specialty coffee reset the public understanding of what coffee could cost. Once one place could charge five dollars and fifty cents for a dressed-up cup of coffee, everyone else had permission to raise the baseline.
I can almost hear my uncle’s voice when I look at modern coffee culture. He would have folded his arms, given that skeptical advertising-man side-eye, and said something like, “Congratulations. You took something that was given out for free and figured out how to make people pay five dollars for it.”
From a business standpoint, someone might call that brilliant.
From an ethical standpoint, he would have asked the better question: did you improve anything?
Because the issue is not merely that coffee became expensive. The issue is that a courtesy became a profit center. Coffee used to be part of the way people conducted themselves. It was one of those little gestures that made business less sterile and human contact a bit warmer. When every courtesy becomes a line item, something changes. Not just in pricing, but in the relationship.
They did not merely raise the price of coffee. They put a price tag on civility.
There was a time when “How do you take your coffee?” was a simple question.
Black. Light and sweet. Just milk. Two sugars. Strong, if you have it.
The question belonged to hospitality. It meant, “I am offering you something. Tell me how not to ruin it.”
Now the same question can sound like a chemistry exam, a lifestyle declaration, and a personality inventory all at once.
“I prefer a medium-bodied roast with a controlled acidity profile, a trace of Madagascar cinnamon, oat milk warmed but not steamed, and just enough caramel to round the bitterness without overwhelming the bean.”
At some point, coffee stopped being a drink and became a statement about the person drinking it.
That’s the real trick.
The old question was, “How do you take it?”
The new question is, “What kind of person are you?”
What roast? What origin? What milk? What flavor? What ritual? What cup? What machine? What morning routine? What does your coffee say about you?
And the answer, if we are being honest, should usually be: nothing. It says you bought coffee.
For many people, the cup also became a small status symbol. Not wealth exactly, but the performance of refinement at an accessible price. The drink became a little badge that said: I have taste, I have ritual, I have preferences, I am not just drinking coffee.
This is where modern consumer culture keeps confusing complication with improvement. More ingredients do not automatically make something better. More customization does not automatically make something more refined. More vocabulary does not automatically create quality. A higher price does not automatically mean a higher experience.
A mocha-caramel-cappuccino-pumpkin-spice-whipped-foam-whatever may be enjoyable. Fine. Some people like sweet drinks. Some people like caramel. Some people like chocolate, cinnamon, oat milk, cold foam, or seasonal flavors. There is nothing morally wrong with liking these things.
But let’s stop pretending this is always some higher form of coffee civilization.
Often, it’s dessert with caffeine.
Coffee did not become better in proportion to the price. It became something more billable.
A plain cup of coffee is easy competition. Most people can make one at home. But a named seasonal drink with syrups, foam, alternate milk, toppings, temperature rules, and branded ritual feels harder to reproduce. The ingredients may not be rare. The process may not be magical. But the customer is trained to believe the experience lives there, in that store, under that name, in that cup, at that price.
Complexity becomes a moat.
They are not just selling flavor. They are selling the inconvenience of making it yourself.
Once complexity makes the drink feel proprietary, novelty keeps the customer from noticing how repetitive the transaction has become.
And once the lifestyle mystique did its work, coffee marketing became even simpler. It started to resemble candy marketing for adults.
New flavor. New syrup. New seasonal drink. New topping. New cup. New limited-time item. Try this. Post this. Come back for the next one.
After all the talk of sophistication, much of modern coffee marketing now works like Bubble Yum or Pop Rocks for grown-ups. It is novelty, sugar, habit, and ritual served hot in a branded cup.
That’s not an accident.
Sugar keeps people coming back. Novelty keeps people interested. Branding gives them permission to treat the whole thing as something more meaningful than it is. The drink becomes less about coffee and more about participating in the next little cycle of consumption.
And this raises the most obvious question: if the coffee itself is so good, why does it need so much help?
At some point, the toppings stop enhancing the product and start concealing it.
Many modern coffee drinks are not celebrations of coffee. They are disguises for coffee. If the drink needs syrup, whipped cream, caramel, pumpkin spice, chocolate, foam, cinnamon, branding, and a poetic seasonal name before people enjoy it, maybe the coffee was not the star of the show.
Personally, I do not like the plain coffee at some of the major chains. It tastes like rocket fuel in all the wrong ways. Too strong, too bitter, too harsh, and not in a way that makes me think, “Ah, refinement.” It makes me think, “This needs to be buried under something.”
And apparently, burying it under something became a business model.
This is why the boredom test matters.
A friend of mine once worked in an ice cream place. He could try all the flavors, all the combinations, all the strange mixtures. At first, that kind of access is fun. Tutti-frutti this, candy-mixed that, weird combinations, seasonal flavors, whatever came through the door. But after a while, the novelty wears off. The flavors blur. The performance loses its magic.
At the end of the day, he said, you usually just want vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, maybe pistachio or rum raisin.
The simple flavors survive because they are no longer performing. They just have to be good.
A good scoop of vanilla can survive being vanilla. A good cup of coffee can survive being coffee.
Novelty dazzles the inexperienced palate. Quality survives the boredom test.
But coffee culture kept adding layers anyway. Not just flavors, but claims. Coffee became productivity. Coffee became intellect. Coffee became artistry. Coffee became reflection. Coffee became a morning philosophy. Coffee became the prop of the serious person, the creative person, the overworked person, the thoughtful person, the person who is too complex for ordinary beverages.
And this is where we need to be honest.
Coffee may make you more alert. Fine. Caffeine has an effect. Nobody has to pretend otherwise.
But alertness is not wisdom. Caffeine is not creativity. Sugar is not reflection. A café ritual is not artistic depth. A branded cup is not sophistication.
Coffee did not become a human intellectual upgrade. Marketing simply learned how to imply that it did.
This is where the cigarette parallel becomes useful, not because coffee and cigarettes are the same thing, but because people often misidentify what they actually value in a habit.
Smokers often said cigarettes calmed them. I heard that for years. “It relaxes me.” “It gives me a minute.” “It helps me think.” But I always suspected the cigarette was getting credit for the pause.
The step outside. The break from the room. The few minutes when no one expected anything. The hands occupied. The eyes looking away. The day interrupted.
The cigarette created a socially recognized excuse to stop. You could leave the desk, leave the conversation, leave the building, stand outside, breathe, look at the sky, stare at nothing, and be left alone for a moment. The ritual made room for the pause, and then the product got credit for what the pause provided.
You could get much of the same benefit by sitting outside with nothing in your hand. Watch birds. Stare into a fish tank. Sit quietly in a chair. Look out a window. Walk around the block. Let your mind settle.
But silence does not come in a branded package. A pause is hard to sell unless you attach a product to it.
So the cigarette got the credit.
Coffee borrowed the same trick.
The cup, the walk, the café, the counter, the table, the warm object in the hand, the few minutes before work, the brief illusion of solitude before the day starts — these may be doing more emotional work than the drink itself.
But the coffee gets the credit.
People say coffee helps them think. Maybe sometimes it helps them wake up. But very often, the thinking comes from the pause around the coffee. The moment of separation. The chair. The walk. The ritual. The permission to stop doing one thing before starting another.
Coffee is not always the engine of reflection. Sometimes it is just the prop that gives reflection permission to happen.
That distinction matters because the product is often doing the opposite of what the story says. The marketing suggests calm, thoughtfulness, artistry, control, ritual, and refinement. The cup may actually be delivering caffeine, sugar, stimulation, habit, and a mild dependency dressed up as personal culture.
The issue is not that people like coffee. Like the coffee. Enjoy the coffee. Make it sweet, bitter, hot, iced, plain, or ridiculous. The issue is the false cause and effect. The cup did not make you thoughtful. The syrup did not make you creative. The brand did not make you sophisticated. The drink may be part of a ritual, but it is not the source of everything the ritual provides.
That confusion is where the bullshit lives.
That’s the broader American problem. Coffee is not unique. Coffee is just the example in the cup.
In America, we rarely allow popularity to remain popularity. We convert it into an industry, then into an identity, then into a delusion, and then we act surprised when it burns out.
A hot dog gets reintroduced as a bratwurst. Pickle juice gets a moment. Crackers become part of a hosting identity. Bottled water gets a story. Sneakers become status symbols. A seasonal coffee becomes an event. The object changes less than the machinery around it.
The problem is not that we like things. The problem is that we keep building machines around liking them.
My uncle understood the fine line between marketing, advertising, sales, and bullshit. Marketing found the market. Advertising communicated to that market. Sales closed the deal. Bullshit manufactured the insecurity first, then sold the product as emotional repair.
Coffee already had a place. Coffee already had a use. Coffee already had social meaning. It warmed people. It woke people up. It accompanied food, conversation, work, waiting, visiting, and thinking. It did not need to be transformed into a personality system.
But the machine cannot leave a useful thing alone when it can be made more profitable by making people feel different about themselves.
So we got the coffee lifestyle. Then the coffee ritual. Then the coffee vocabulary. Then the coffee equipment. Then the coffee sugar delivery system. Then the five-dollar cup. Then the seasonal adult candy cycle.
And underneath all of it, the stubborn truth remains.
It is coffee.
That does not mean people should stop enjoying it. Drink it black, light, sweet, iced, hot, foamed, flavored, cheap, expensive, simple, or ridiculous. Add milk. Add sugar. Add caramel. Add cinnamon. Add whatever makes you happy.
But stop trying to make it more than what it is.
It’s just a fucking cup of coffee.
Steven Gardner writes essays on tech, culture, marketing, consumer behavior, memory, and the absurdities of modern life. His work often examines how ordinary things acquire inflated meanings through advertising, nostalgia, and social performance. More of his writing can be found at StevenGardner.com.
