Kant's one rule
Kant's one rule, and why it kills most marketing tactics on contact
A German philosopher gave the world one test for whether an action is right. Run your marketing through it and watch half your playbook fail.
In 1785 Immanuel Kant, a small, orderly man in the Prussian city of Königsberg, published a short book with a long name. In it he proposed one rule for all moral decisions. He called it the categorical imperative.
The rule, in simple words: act only in a way that you would be happy for everyone to act.
That is it. Before you do a thing, imagine every person doing the same thing. If the world that results is one you would want to live in, go ahead. If it falls apart, stop.
I started applying this to marketing a few years ago. It is brutal.
Fake urgency. "Only 3 left in stock." Imagine every brand doing it. Nobody believes any stock count ever again. The tactic destroys the thing it uses. Fail.
Buying followers. Imagine everyone doing it. Follower counts mean nothing. The platform becomes a ghost town of bots following bots. Fail.
Hiding the unsubscribe link. Imagine every email doing it. Email becomes unusable. Fail.
The pattern is clear. A trick works only because most people are honest. The trick borrows trust from the honest and spends it. If everyone used the trick, the trust would be gone and the trick would stop working.
Now run the honest tactics through the same test.
Telling customers plainly what a thing costs. Everyone does it. Buying gets easier. Pass.
Publishing a useful guide and asking for nothing. Everyone does it. The internet becomes more useful. Pass.
Saying who your product is wrong for. Everyone does it. Fewer refunds, happier customers. Pass.
Kant had a second version of the rule that I find even more useful. Treat people as ends in themselves, never only as means. In marketing terms: the reader is a person with their own day, their own problems, their own money. They are the point. They are never just a conversion.
Most marketing failures I see come from forgetting this. The campaign treats the audience as a crowd to be moved. The audience notices and walks away.
Kant never married, rarely left his city, and took the same walk at the same time every day. The neighbours set their clocks by him. He would have been a terrible creative director. But his one rule is the best filter I know for deciding what to leave out of a campaign.
