What they Want, What they Need

Reading the comments on Saul Hansel's NYT piece, An Icon that Says They're Watching You. The two knee-jerk responses to advertising appear in the first few:

#3: "Make a great product and people will seek you out and buy it. The market research dollars should be for learning what people truly want - not what business and advertisers tell us to want."

#4: "Stop polluting my world with ads that will never appeal to me."

Rephrased:

#3. Stop telling me what I want.
#4. Please tell me what I want.

Is the truth perhaps somewhere in between?