Yep, I think recognising that seemingly 'informative' marketing is still marketing is key in looking at the ecosystem of a brand trying to announce its existence and attract you to it. Smaller stores may not have the same dominant ad spend, but they still market.

I think there is also a maximalist trap that I kind of fell into in my TLC that is 'everything a brand does is marketing'. To a certain degree that's true with hyper optimised products like Coca Cola, they'll have whole teams dedicated to the bottle design, for example, and marketing budgets to promote the bottle design as a cultural symbol. But to be like 'Mom and pop store down the road not having the budget to run YouTube ads is actually a marketing choice' is fatuous.

The net result of the mom and pop store not advertising and therefore not provoking a negative 'this brand advertised to me so fuck them' response just coincidentally works in their favour for people who don't like ads, but if that mom and pop store could afford an advertising budget you bet your bottom dollar they'd run jingled on every platform they could.

Mostly calling myself out here because yeah the god of the gaps-esque argument 'it's the ads you don't notice that work best' is mystique that marketing fuckheads like to use to present themselves as omnipotent.