Tilted
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Very true and nicely put, which is what makes marketing so tricky. You can spend a #### ton of money, and it may or may not get you a return because creating interest is, as you said, an art.
Yeah. That's why, when you need to get people interested in something - or just make them aware of it - you find someone that's proven they're good at that and you just pay them. You don't say, well, I can do that myself. Maybe you can, but there's a good chance you can't - not as well, anyway.
I'm of course speaking in the context of commercial interests, not with situations such as what's been discussed in this thread - people trying to organize something as a public service of sorts. It often wouldn't make sense (or be viable) to pay a professional in such cases.