Finding a Working Definition for Marketing, Branding & Advertising

By: Brian Wilson Sykes / Founder + CCO of AdJourney

Did anyone else have the childhood experience of going to their parents with the random request for how to spell or define a word, and being presented with the follow up statement that went something like… “go look it up in the dictionary.” 

The dictionary was the established source of the actual or preferred way of spelling and provided all the standardized and known definitions for a word. It was a standard that was structured, made sense and provided an anchor. I know if I looked up a word in my Merriam-Webster, it would be very close to the definition you might find in any other common dictionary of the day - Oxford American Dictionary, Cambridge English Dictionary, Macmillan, Collins English Dictionary, or The Chambers Dictionary. But alas, even with this very large collection at our disposal (adding to it the digital editions and Wikipedia) we have a challenge in front of us. Understanding terms related to Marketing, Advertising, Branding… there is no longer a true consensus of what each of these words actually mean and represent. Don’t believe me, spend a few minutes looking up the words and discover the broad array of definitions available - depending on who is providing it. This became very real to me when listening to Chris Do on a recent podcast talking with a fellow marketer about this very topic. It made me realize that my own sense of vagary was not the only one challenged by what was considered the modern definition for the terms - where one ended and the other began. But why? Because as life (and the supporting technology we are all exposed to) moves forward, the definitions of terminology begin to overlap and branch out. 

Let me see if I can explain this by using an example that is relatable. Let’s think about something anyone who has reached adulthood can relate too. For some of us, at one time if we were asked to conjure up a mental image of a phone - the choices would all have included a cord. For me as a little kid, we had an ugly olive green phone the size of several bricks. The face plate had a circle with little holes you would spin to dial the phone number - one digit at a time. By the time I reached middle school we had a wall version with lit up digits and a curled cord that hung down to drag the floor. Several times running through the house to the chagrin of my parents - I was clotheslined by that cord…. By the time I was driving in high school, we had a cordless phone. Same design as the prior corded version, but it had a little antenna on the side - coated in some form of rubberized vinyl. Reach was limited to a known distance from the “base”. By this time, I knew of a few people who had “bricks” in their car. The big, heavy phone - often black. So, 2 categories of phones. Home phone and portable car phones. A few years after college, the cell phone emerged - in the form of an odd folding contraption or a bulky wallet shaped device. But a new term was arising… portable device. Then there came an iPhone. The portable phone, the electronic device which was by core definition, a “phone” was emerging as something far different from the large rotary dialing phone and even the wall hanging cordless phone. Yet they have the same name. Is the function the same? Well, all of the above can be used to make phone calls. But if you presently have a smart phone - do you use it more to scroll through TikToks and Instagram or to actually be on the device to make phone calls? 

That was a long example, but think of traditional marketing and advertising over that same span of time and experience. The established channels of communication were much simpler. in the 80’s and 90’s - small business was most frequently relegated to the core community reachable by your service vehicles and within reach of your local phone service. Long Distance phone calls were handled as an extra expense either by the minute or by some special rate plan. Channels of advertising were print based - newspapers, phonebooks, magazine, mailers billboards, etc - or on air - television and radio commercials. The emerging call centers could engage over the phone a polite society that would listen to your entire pitch even if it interrupted dinner.

Oh yeah, this is an article in pursuit of answering the question of definitions. So, let’s take one idea at a time and go to the source everyone uses to find answers - Google - and give the ol’ girl an ask…

“What is marketing?” 

The AMA (American Marketing Association) came up with the first spot answer. Since by their own declaration of reviewing and either re-approving or modifying every three years the definition of MARKETING (by a panel of five active research scholars) - and by virtue of the fact - they have “Marketing” in their very name and are an American Association for Marketing and Marketing Research - this group may very well be the best to answer this question. So, AMA, what do you say IS the definition of Marketing?

Marketing - “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

(Approved 2017, and being this is 1/1/21, this definition is up for re-consideration.)

Some others have given some pretty strong definitions of Marketing, so let’s round it out with a few more voices.

In 2017, the New York Times (that bastion of truth in print… or wait, am I confusing that with other tabloid style periodicals… hard to keep up), defined marketing as, “the art of telling stories so enthralling that people lose track of their wallets. It is one of the primary components of business management and commerce.” 2017 seemed to be the year of making a mark with a definition!

Caroline Forsey (@cforsey1) wrote an article for Hubspot entitled, “What is the Purpose of Marketing?” (https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-marketing). That may be a better approach to addressing this challenging question. Rather than tie Marketing’s definition to a set of specific terms, and rather defining what it actually does or is responsible for. she wrote that the Purpose of Marketing is:

Marketing is the process of getting people interested in your company's product or service. This happens through market research, analysis, and understanding your ideal customer's interests. Marketing pertains to all aspects of a business, including product development, distribution methods, sales, and advertising.

I think I like her approach to answering this way, particularly her verbiage. It is usable and provides a framework that is better and more in line with what Marketers (yours truly included) actually do in the business arena when they are asked, “what is it you do?” - “Marketing.”

One defined. Let’s tackle the second term now.

Branding.

I have to agree with Chris Do on this one. The BEST person to answer this question, is none other than the one who literally wrote the books on this subject - Marty Neumier. Marty defines the term BRANDING in the following way:

Let’s start with what branding isn’t. It is not a logo. A logo is a very useful tool for business, but, it’s not the brand, it’s a symbol for the brand. A brand is not a product. Some people talk about this brand, and buying this brand of that brand - and they are really talking about buying one product or another product. The brand is not that. People say the brand is a promise the company makes to customers. There is some truth in that. It does end up acting as a promise, but that is not what it is either. Advertising people like to say it is the sum of all the impressions that a company makes on an audience. Well, if your trying to sell a lot of impressions, I see where that might be useful to you, but from a businesses point of view, why do they want that? And, how does that help creative people understand what they are doing? None of those things are really what branding is.

A brand is a result. It is a customer’s gut feeling about a product, a service, or a company. It ends up in their heads, in their hearts. they take whatever raw materials you throw at them, and they make something out of it. But they are making it. They are creating it… A brand is like a reputation. It is your business reputation…

So, in effect, your BRAND is the result of the story told and activity engaged as a business. BRANDING then is corralling the efforts of the business and its ongoing communication and conversation in the marketplace to derive a common mindset regarding your business reputation. What reputation has your BRAND created?

Okay, so that takes us to the final word being addressed - Advertising.

In college (over 20 years ago) we were told that ADVERTISING was any paid form of promotion for goods, ideas and/or services. Key words being it is paid for and it is for promotion. I think that definition still stands fairly accurately. More strategically, Advertising (paraphrased from Wikipedia) is:

The active implementation of Marketing Communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea.

They all overlap - branding, marketing and advertising. But in summary, your BRAND is your reputation. Marketing is the understanding of your market and defining the means of making your product or service stand out and be desirable. Advertising is the paid promotion of your product or service, creatively communicated.

There… I think that might work for the present definitions. By the way, if your kids ask you how to spell a word, or what does a particular word mean, do you send them to the dictionary, Wikipedia - or with a smart phone in hand, do they even bother to ask any more?