Marketing can manipulate. Or it can create meaning.

Why I, now over 50, only use my marketing skills for clients whose impact I can morally justify.

Perhaps you're familiar with this. You're really good at something. So good, in fact, that others benefit from it – economically, strategically, visibly. And yet, there's this quiet question in the background: What am I actually using my talents for right now?

I come from a traditional marketing background. I know how to generate attention and create needs where none existed before. That's part of the craft.

For a long time, that felt perfectly right to me. At some point – for me, it was after 50 – a question became more concrete. Not dramatic. More like a sober question: Do I want to continue putting my energy into everything that's possible? Or only into what makes sense?

For me, this made morality in marketing tangible. Not as an ideal, but as a filter: Do I want to see more of it in the world?

For example, I currently work with aerogel-it.de – a company whose technology and supermaterials measurably save energy and conserve resources.

This clarity of impact noticeably changes the collaboration. When clients know what they stand for – what image their brand should have and who they want to work with – something emerges that cannot be planned: focus combined with courage.

In this case, it even took the courage to approach visionary and bestselling author Frank Schätzing and win him over to this very topic.

Not as a marketing gimmick. But because it simply fits and is honest.

Perhaps this isn't an issue specific to the over-50s. Perhaps it's an issue of attitude that has only just reached me.

The question remains the same: What do you use what you love for?