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Why I Quit Marketing For Good

And it’s not about the toddler CEOs and how social media has devolved into pay-for-play lies, it’s become a discipline that tells us we’re never enough.

6 min readApr 19, 2025

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Photo by Henley Design Studio on Unsplash

Years ago, my work meant something to me. People paid me to tell their stories and those stories were about needs. A need to better the world or at least not leave it worse off than how we found it. A need to solve a problem, cure an illness — a need to make people whole. Here’s how we’ll make your life better, easier. You’ll have more time for the things and people you love because time is the one thing you can never get back. You’ll be smarter, fitter, healthier, happier. Now look at you now, dressed up in happiness. Bathed in light! And while I was never foolish enough to believe we were savings lives — we were merely part of a larger machine and our job was to create and spread stories — I never felt I needed to take a shower after a call or a project or a marketing plan.

Until I did.

Until I opened my eyes to the fiction that had been meticulously packaged and sold to me. Until I kept parroting you have to work hard to gain your customers’ trust and the constant refrain was always: how do I sell more faster? How do I go viral? How do I bury my hands in the new generation’s pocket? And…

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Felicia C. Sullivan
Felicia C. Sullivan

Written by Felicia C. Sullivan

Storyteller/Author. Marketing Exec in a former life. Hire me: t.ly/bEnd7 My Substack: https://feliciacsullivan.substack.com

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