Check The Rhyme: What is marketing?

Check it!

“If it don't move your feet, then, I don't eat, so we like neck-to-neck “

This line comes from OutKast’s Andre Benjamin (a.k.a. 3 Stacks, Andre 3000) in the classic tune "Elevators." To me, this really gets at the heart of what marketing is all about. So let's break this down for a moment and build some foundation.

If you ask ten people what marketing is, you probably get twenty different answers. Why? There are a lot of abstractions, jargon, and buzzwords used to define marketing. But I like things to be very simple, especially at the foundation, so that we can build more complexity and nuance on top of it. Let's explore this further.

When I think about the definition of marketing, I think of my collaborator and friend, John Branch, who references the Oxford Dictionary of 1455 as a concrete definition for marketing, which defines it as "to bring or to sell to the market."

The market, by definition, is the people, right? "Market demand" is really people demand. "Market behavior" is really the behavior of people. While economists think of the market as the place where exchanges happen, like a marketplace, my perspective is that if people aren't in that place, there is no market. Therefore, people are the market.

So with the old Oxford Dictionary definition, we're really talking about “to bring to the people,” which makes sense. Marketing is about going to market. With that foundational understanding, then one must then ask: why do we go to market? What is the core function--the purpose--of marketing?

At its core, marketing is about influencing behavior and getting people to move.

Don't drink this, drink that

Don't go here, go there ?

Don't buy his shoes, buy my shoes

We go to market to influence behavioral adoption and this is where Andre's line is so powerful! If people don't move their feet, then they don't adopt behavior. If people don't vote, go to my website, subscribe to my newsletter, or come to my party...if people don't take on any of those actions, I don't win as a business!

"If it don't move your feet, then, I don't eat, so we like neck-to-neck"

This should be gospel for marketers because it really gets at what our job truly is, to get people to move.

There you have it. Thanks, Andre Benjamin...Professor Andre Benjamin.