Marketing isn't glitter

It is a fundamental mechanism to our economy.

Marketing, if we look at the origin of the word, or etymology, comes from the word market. The term marketing is thought to have appeared in the 16th century, referring to the buying and selling in a physical market.

Simple enough, right?

You'd take your potatoes, walk to the physical market, and sell them. The simple act of having your potatoes displayed in a market was marketing.

Why so?

Because, at the time, the market was very simple compared to how we're living our lives today. The physical market was the market. The potatoes on the shelves were the display advertising, the supply and demand was literally happening in front of the stalls, the awareness of the potatoes was created by being present in the market alone.

Essentially, because all buying and selling happened in this single physical market place, the simple process of being present encompassed all aspects of marketing. The omnipresence of a product was achieved by being present in one single physical location.

Enters: complexity.

Complexity completely changed marketing. All of a sudden, there wasn't one single physical place where you'd sell your potatoes, there were THOUSANDS. Consequently, your products weren't present in all markets, which led some customers to not even know about your products, which led to you losing market share because of low awareness.

We could refer to this phenomenon as the multiplicity of channels, the biggest example of which is the arrival of the internet. All of a sudden, on top of your physical potato stall, you had a variety of digital places where potatoes were bought.

The buying and selling started to occur on Facebook, Google, TikTok, your own Website, Amazon... and so, because marketing is the act of taking your products to a market, and because the 'market' was now highly fragmented into tiny digital stalls, we had to create paid social, search engine optimisation, Shopify and others.

Marketing sometimes tries to overcomplicate things, but the process is the same than taking your potatoes to the physical market 500 years ago: you simply want to have your product displayed where the buying and selling happens.

The difference now is that the buying and selling happens in many, many different places. And so, to take your product to these places, you need many different routes.

So, marketing is taking your products to markets. Great, simple enough. Markets become highly fragmented and complex, expanding into global markets, and therefore marketing, the act of taking your products there, becomes equally complex.

Think about all the differences between entering the market 500 years ago (having your potatoes displayed on a stall) and entering the market today. You might need to build websites, translate instructions, create packaging, put together supply chains, find warehouses...

Okay great, that's it! You've done it, you entered the market and life is good. Right?

Enters: competition.

This is where I find the most useful aspect of marketing. Marketing was again compelled to evolve, this time due to competition.

Here I want to take you back to our potato stall 500 years ago. Once you managed to get your potatoes in the market, you'd done your job. There was only one potato stall, with one variety of potatoes. If people did not like your potatoes, if people did not understand what potatoes were, if people wanted different kinds of potatoes: too bad.

They had no choice.

In a market where people have no choice - a monopolist market - there is little pressure for improvement. Once complexity entered the equation, paired with the new multiplicity of place people could buy, the potato seller realised something: there was other potato sellers already present in the new places!

Imagine the shock.

You've walked carrying your potatoes your whole life to the physical market. You never had a care in the world. All of a sudden, the world becomes complex and integrated, you create a website to sell your potatoes and you realise: there was 1000 other potato sellers already there!

Now, the previous understanding of marketing isn't enough anymore. Taking your products to the market, where the buying and selling occurs, isn't sufficient. Why? Because competition is so high, there are so many different similar products, that you could take your products to the market and still sell none.

You could create a website and say "I sell potatoes" - and sell no potatoes. What an heresy! I took my products to the market my whole life and it was enough! I fact, rather than just take my product to the physical market as I used to do, I went the extra effort and took it to different channels, to websites, and yet it wasn't enough!?

Competition in markets forced marketing to evolve into other areas: how to differentiate my product from others? How to make sure customers understanding of the product? How can I have an offer that is competitive?

That is because in a competitive market, and not a monopolistic market of 500 years ago, taking your products to the market isn't enough to sell them. Back in the 500 years old physical stall, you take your product to the market, they'll be sold - at least to the optimum level. All buyers are present, there's no other stalls and no competition, everything is happening in one place. You being present equals sells.

But competition changed marketing. Marketing was like "?? it isn't enough anymore to take my products to the market?!"

And so, many different branches of marketing arose.

One important force shaping marketing is the need to make the product understandable. If your product is less understandable than the next one, you will lose on the sell.

Again, marketing loves to try and make things complicated, but making your product understandable is core to a lot of what's done by marketing nowadays, namely copywriting, ads, demonstration, offer design and others.

Competition and complexity are both fundamental needs to a healthy market. For centuries, theories of economics have talked about 'perfect markets' - where all of the information is available to the buyer.

A perfect market is a place where the buyer would know everything required to pick one product. Imagine if there was only 3 cars in the world. To create a perfect market, you'd need to have a place where all 3 cars can be bought, and where all the information about the cars was known to the buyers: all the features, durability, reviews, materials...

This is very important, as it puts the buyer in a position of control: knowledge is power, and perfect markets protect the buyer from being ripped off.

But in a world of complexity and competition, perfect markets are extremely complicated to create. Imagine if there was a 4th car - much better than the others - but you had never heard of it. The reason? The 4th car had a terrible marketing team.

In this example, the consumer loses out. Because the marketing team of the 4th car hasn't been able to fight off complexity and competition, the market isn't perfect, and in an imperfect market, consumers lose out - so the classical theory goes.

From that stand point, marketing is an enabler of markets. It brings you all the options and say: you choose.

Some companies are better at bringing you the options, others are better at making the options understandable. And so, in some cases, you buy the product not because the product is the best, but because the market isn't perfect, and the companies have successfully played it to their advantage.

However, the competition in the market pushes companies and their products in a healthy way towards a perfect market. Towards a market where people know their products, where they understand their products, and where the people are in a healthy position to make a choice.

So, marketing isn't simply glitter, it is a healthy mechanism for healthy markets.

Without marketing, you'd end up with a Google of the early days. You'd search, but only irrelevant results would pop up. You'd look for answers, but the answers would be buried into irrelevance. You'd study a topic and click on a link and learn without knowing that much better sources were in existence.

Look at all the useful products you own, you own them because of marketing.

Marketing enables markets, especially in a complex and competitive world.

The lack of marketing goes hand-in-hand with a lack of competition. And a lack of competition usually means less options, and less choice. Less choice often means less better choices.

And less better choices leaves you worse off.