For the most part our best interests are at least loosely aligned with the corporate powers that be and marketing just fades into the background noise. For example, Apple does a great job packaging its iPhones but the truth is it’s just a cool device. If you have the means, your life is probably a tiny bit more enjoyable if you have a kick-ass smartphone.

The fact that the media slavishly picks up on the story of the people camping out to buy their iPhones helps build the frenzy, and Apple certainly encourages such coverage, but the demand is organic. There’s no need to work on convincing people Apple makes a good phone. They just do. End of conversation.

Would that our world was made up entirely of iPhones. It’s not. For the most part what we see, read, eat and drink is a bunch of garbage we lap up out of habit, as much as anything else. At some point there comes a time where science catches up to habit and we realize just how horrible a beloved product really is for us.

The moment of grim reality happened in tobacco in 1952 when Reader’s Digest of all magazines published a piece called “Cancer by the Carton." From then on the tobacco industry banded together to make some of the most magnificent ads ever seen. The Marlboro Man was little more than a sunset-hued reminder that real men didn’t get told what they could and couldn’t inhale. Joe Camel, Virginia Slims hosting a tennis tournament. It was all genius. Doomed, of course. Cigarette consumption on a per capita basis peaked in 1963. History’s greatest works of art are borne of romantic futility and, dammit, the tobacco industry may have done a lot of horrible things but we should at least acknowledge the way the industry advanced the art of marketing in the wake of the Cancer by the Carton scandal.

Soda takes control

Yesterday the soda industry faced up to the daunting trends facing its business in a way that had their deceased cigarette marketing predecessors wheezing with delight. Speaking from the Clinton Global Initiative representatives from Pepsi (PEP), Coca-Cola (KO) and Dr. Pepper (DPS) pledged to reduce the number of calories consumed in the form of sugary sodas by 20% in the next 11 years.

“We’ll use the most critical levers we have at our disposal, and the focus really will be on transforming the beverage landscape in the U.S. over the next 10 years,” said Susan Neely, chief executive of the American Beverage Association, the industry trade group.

Ms. Neely called the commitment a “stretch goal” and said it had been hotly debated in executive suites at the three companies. Neely says the industry will push low and no calorie drinks by levering its promotional muscle and tie ins with literally every place that sells soda on earth.

Ladies and gentlemen we are in the presence of genius. Susan Neely of the American Beverage Association, we’ve never met but allow me to commend you on your spectacular, breathtaking cynicism and pro-activity. This transcends anything we’ve seen from the tobacco industry. The soda industry selling a 20% reduction in caloric intake over the next 11 years is right up there with “You can’t fire me, I quit” in the annals of professional spin and crisis framing.

Here’s what Ms. Neely and the rest of the industry aren’t telling you: the market for sugary drinks is fading despite the industry spending more than a billion a year pushing the stuff. Per capita soda consumption in the U.S. peaked in 1998 and was at the lowest levels since 1986 last year. Calories from soda contracted 23% from 2000 to 2013. At the time the industry considered this drop off something of a crisis.

Beyond just changing marketing strategies Coke went on a buying binge, snapping up Vitamin Water for $4.2 billion in 2007 and paying more than $2 billion for a partial stake in Monster energy drinks earlier this year.

As good fortune would have it, Vitamin Water along with Gatorade, Coke Zero and whatever low-calorie fizzy product the companies can possibly conceive of will fit quite nicely in the empty cooler space created by the soda industry’s selfless reduction goals.

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