This Is Marketing

Marketing is the act of making change happen. Making is insufficient. You haven’t made an impact until you’ve changed someone.

the best ideas require significant change.

Stories, connections, and experiences
The good news is that we don’t need to rely on the shiniest, latest digital media shortcut—we have even more powerful, nuanced, and timeless tools at our disposal.
We tell stories. Stories that resonate and hold up over time. Stories that are true, because we made them true with our actions and our products and our services.
We make connections. Humans are lonely, and they want to be seen and known. People want to be part of something. It’s safer that way, and often more fun.
We create experiences. Using a product, engaging with a service. Making a donation, going to a rally, calling customer service. Each of these actions is part of the story; each builds a little bit of our connection. As marketers, we can offer these experiences with intent, doing them on purpose.
The entire organization works for and with the marketer, because marketing is all of it. What we make, how we make it, who we make it for. It is the effects and the side effects, the pricing and the profit, all at once.

Marketing has changed, but our understanding of what we’re supposed to do next hasn’t kept up. When in doubt, we selfishly shout. When in a corner, we play small ball, stealing from our competition instead of broadening the market. When pressed, we assume that everyone is just like us, but uninformed.
Mostly, we remember growing up in a mass market world, where TV and the Top 40 hits defined us. As marketers, we seek to repeat the old-fashioned tricks that don’t work anymore.

The other kind of marketing, the effective kind, is about understanding our customers’ worldview and desires so we can connect with them. It’s focused on being missed when you’re gone, on bringing more than people expect to those who trust us. It seeks volunteers, not victims.

The answer to just about every question about work is really the question, “Who can you help?”

Marketing is the act of making change happen.

doesn’t make any sense to make a key and then run around looking for a lock to open.

This is marketing

Marketing seeks more. More market share, more customers, more work.
Marketing is driven by better. Better service, better community, better outcomes.
Marketing creates culture. Status, affiliation, and people like us.
Most of all, marketing is change.
Change the culture, change your world.
Marketers make change happen.
Each of us is a marketer, and each of us has the ability to make more change than we imagined. Our opportunity and our obligation is to do marketing that we’re proud of.

Most of all, marketing is change.