Thanks for the input!

Somewhere along the way, marketing went from ‘Big M’ to ‘Little M’ in peoples minds. It equates really only to the promotional aspect with an emphasis on spin. We even still see this today in the political landscape where the job is to keep candidates ‘on message’. All of which has seemed to have led to a generation of marketers that think inside-out and focus only on the level of their creativity to break through the clutter in communications. This has led to some huge frustrations with the business leaders we interviewed for our book on this front … they view marketing as just a runaway cost center that doesn’t contribute to the business very much and needs to be controlled.

You’re hitting the problem straight on here. This definition of marketing was never what I learned the discipline ought to be. At it’s essence, the job is more fundamental and important than most are making it … it’s a job of ‘building real and deep connections to what buyers value most’. It starts with understanding their needs and preferences completely so that your company is actually working on building products people want to buy and then focuses on authentic ways of communicating why customers might be interested. Shouting ‘buy my product’ is useless (noone is listening anymore anyway) … using social media and other forms of publishing content to establish connections is far more effective.

I’m fascinated by the number of communities that are developing freely around these kinds of things … at times and places that we would have never thought of before in a marketing context. Thanks for your thoughts and your work here.