You probably won't agree, because it's not a very charitable thing to say about marketers, sorry.
My position is that democracy works well when the will of the people gets translated into action in a way that still resembles what those people organically need.
Marketing is the process of tampering with that translation such that what actually happens benefits the marketers' customers, typically at the expense of the people.
Presumably there are practices and technologies that we could invest in which preserve this translation, but we haven't been investing in those. Instead we've been investing in marketing. We're building a world where you can spend money to shape public opinion, and that's a world that's toxic to democracy.
Perhaps there was a time when information about available goods and services was hard to come by. Maybe you legitimately needed somebody to get the word out. But I don't think we live in that world anymore.
In case you're not familliar with "the shoe event horizon":
> As a society sinks into depression, the people of the society need to cheer themselves up by buying themselves gifts, often shoes. It is also linked to the fact that when you are depressed you look down at your shoes and decide they aren't good enough quality so buy more expensive replacements. As more money is spent on shoes, more shoe shops are built, and the quality of the shoes begins to diminish as the demand for different types of shoes increases. This makes people buy more shoes.
> The above turns into a vicious cycle, causing other industries to decline.
> Eventually the titular Shoe Event Horizon is reached, where the only type of store economically viable to build is a shoe shop. At this point, society ceases to function, and the economy collapses, sending a world spiralling into ruin. In the case of Brontitall and Frogstar World B, the population forsook shoes and evolved into birds.
That's what is happening to us, except instead of shoes, it's ads. We're diminishing the legitimacy of making a good product or being a good leader, because an easier way to win is just pay to shape public opinion.
What you win isn't as good as it would have been if you competed on merit, but that doesn't matter because competing on merit is hard and your opposition isn't doing it.
So I'm saying that it's Marketing vs Democracy and Marketing is winning. Thus we're living in Marketing's endgame and not Democracy's endgame.