I dug up my old marketing textbook this morning in an effort to reconnect with the theory that first introduced me to the wonderful world I now call home.
Contemporary Marketing by Boone, Kurtz, MacKenzie and Snow, First Canadian Edition. As I started to re-read Chapter 1, memories of both fondness and melancholy came over me. I am ever-so passionate for marketing and its many-faceted intricacies but textbooks have never been my cup of tea. Coming from an English Lit background (as well as Business Management), I couldn’t help but wish that the textbook did a better job of engaging me, perhaps a few lines of Austen would’ve helped!
That aside, the first chapter attempts to achieve a lot in some thirty pages of heavy-handed verbiage. But right there to start it all off is “A Definition of Marketing,” Boone et al. define it as “the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, services, organizations, and events to create and maintain relationships that will satisfy individual and organizational objectives.” [Take breath here!]
The definition at its core is not incorrect. It rather accurately (though it is markedly wordy) encompasses the challenging space of marketing and its prismatic quality. It does pin down what the authors describe as a broad scope of activities often difficult to define. And I couldn’t agree more with the foundation they’ve laid.
Marketing is perhaps best described as a term that is defined out of necessity rather than desire. To define it is to give it shape, but I love to think of marketing as something quite fluid and marked by is constant redefinition.
Admittedly, I sometimes struggle when asked what I do for a living,
“I’m in marketing …” is my usual response.
But, what is marketing? I mean, what do you do?” s/he will inevitably ask, but whatever response I give, whether literal like the one above or a little more loose around the edges, will undoubtedly end in ambiguity.
“Marketing is, I guess, finding out what you want or what you need and making it happen,” I’ll say. “It’s every poster you see, every word you read, every website you visit or software you download or brand you like. It is ubiquitous.”
Not quite as elucidating as I’m sure the questioner would’ve hoped, and yet still right on ball.
Marketing is communication and relationships and analysis and creativity and even so much more. But maybe the real definition of marketing is as unique as each individual that calls him/herself a marketer. Marketing is as marketing does, it achieves definition through action and through those who initiate that action.
How would you define it?
