The IC3 Blue Train - A little journal about design, marketing, sales and other matters

Like music, marketing is both an art and a science

Ask ten people about what marketing is and you will get ten different answers depending on whether they think about promoting high volume consumer items, advertising fancy automobiles, luring corporations into buying new computers or anything in between.

Here is how Merriam Webster defines it: “mar.ket.ing n (1561) 1 a: the act or process of selling or purchasing in a market b: the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service2: an aggregate of functions involved in moving goods from producer to consumer.”

While Webster leans towards the scientific aspects, I tend towards the artistic side. My definition is shorter: “Marketing is the art of communicating with people … to generate business”. There are four key words is this sentence:

Art – Marketing is more that a science or a discipline. Like music, it requires basic knowledge and technical skills together with creativity and constant training. Creativity comes on top. And, as in music, new technologies play an important role.

With – In the past, marketing was mainly about broadcasting and hammering a unique proposition to masses through a few limited channels. Today, marketing is increasingly about communicating one-to-one with specific individuals or groups and about interacting with people (two-way communications).

People – The ability to interact with specific groups and individuals allows marketing to address, beyond just customers, other influential people such as employees, investors, opinion makers and other similar categories.

Business – Marketing is not about spreading yet another gospel. It is about making money. Even for charities, the objective is to bring in contributions. This is probably where marketing diverges from being an art. Many artists worry more about expressing feelings than about becoming famous and making money, don’t they?