What is Marketing? And what it should do?

Marketing definitions

If you were to ask what marketing is to ten marketing professionals, you would probably get ten very different answers. So different from one another, you would start to wonder if such a thing as marketing exists or can be defined uniquely.

For instance, according to Philip Kotler, marketing is “The science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit”, while the National Association of Marketing Teachers, back in 1935, defined it as the set of “those business activities involved in the flow of goods and services from production to consumption”. In 2004, AMA - the American Marketing Association, tried to define it as follows “Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders”, which is clearly similar to Kotler’s definition (who, not by chance, is an influential member of AMA) and yet slightly different. According to the Oxford Dictionary, yet, marketing is “the activity of presenting, advertising and selling a company's products or services in the best possible way”.

The (authoritative) examples could go on forever, I am sure anyone can add many more, but you should have grasped the idea by now: there are many possible interpretations of the word marketing.

Kotler’s and AMA’s definitions, though, are very interesting for at least three reasons: first of all, they are among the more renowned, respected, and therefore influential, secondly, they talk about marketing as a productive unit (note the use of the verb “create” recurring in both definitions), and lastly, they seem to consider the end user (i.e. “the customer”) as a passive subject. The marketing is the one in charge, the marketing is tasked with “creating value”, but “in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders” not the end user, who, in this vision, is just the “target” of a communication. But is it so? Is it true that marketing can make people like something useless or utterly unlikeable? And, assuming that is the case, would that be a correct practice, or something bordering on a scam?

Before considering the answers to these questions let’s get back to the Oxford Dictionary definition, which is far more mundane than that of Kotler and AMA. According to the author, marketing is an activity that has to do with sales and the way a product is presented or advertised. In this case, marketing is a form of commercial communication (“present” or “advertise”), whose task is to make something look good (“in the best possible way”) so that it can be sold.

I find this definition much more correct and faithful to the true nature of marketing.

Marketing as an act of communication

Marketing is indeed an act of communication, but here is where the problem lies: defining communication can be a challenge even greater than defining marketing.

We could lose ourselves in the history of communication’s meaning, but without recapping two millennia of philosophical studies, we could just say that there are two main positions in this regard: either communicating is aimed at sharing with others our ideas and vision of the world, or it is a battle, aimed at bending the will of one of the interlocutors to the other’s.

In the first case, it’s two-way communication (when you share with others, you usually get something in return, even without asking), in the second, it’s one-way communication.

Behind these two communication archetypes, there lay two very different visions of the world.

White hat and black hat Marketing

Look at it this way: it’s just like with hackers’ families. There are white hat, or “ethical” hackers, who report vulnerabilities to help companies and the whole environment grow, and there are black hat hackers who exploit others’ vulnerabilities to create profit for themselves.

In the same way, there’s a white hat communication, and therefore a white hat marketing, and a black hat communication, and therefore also a black hat marketing.

At this point, a big caveat is needed: black hat hackers are criminals and, as criminals, indulge in behaviors that are prosecuted by laws in every part of the world. The same clearly does not apply to black hat communicators. It’s not against the law to believe that one communicates to win and persuade others to behave as he wants, or, in other words, that one communicates to transfer his will from his mind to that of others. It might be self-limiting, but it's surely not a crime.

It's a fact, though, that even if black hat communicators might seem to win at first, they oftentimes fall victim to their own schemes.

There’s a good reason for that: in a one-way communication model, you never get feedback from your target and, given that companies cannot do without customers (just like no man is an island on his own) if they follow this road they remain in the dark when things start to go downhill. And, no matter what, there will always be a moment when things will stop working as before.

Best Business Practices

In my years as an entrepreneur first, and as an executive and consultant after, I have seen times and times again companies doing this mistake and the main reason for that is usually sternness. Management of the company usually thinks that a change in product, policies or even the company’s best practices is totally out of the question. If there’s someone who needs to change, well, that’s the customer.

The problem is that marketing can indeed condition customers’ habits, but only up to a certain point, which is as low or high as the advantage perceived by the end user for adopting a certain practice, particularly if it’s a new and counterintuitive one.

So, unless your product is by far the best on the market in solving a very specific problem, you will need feedback from customers and two-way communication, so, ultimately, you will need white-hat marketing.

At this point a second caveat is needed: CEOs and boards are not acting like crazies when they object to changing something, they are just thinking about costs and operational margins, which is a very important thing. The only problem with this is just that the occult costs are not considered in the same way: getting feedback from your customers and acting accordingly, helps you maintain them and avoid them fleeing to one of your competitors, which will happen, sooner or later, if you are not ready to correct the aim every now and then. So the real question is: what would be the cost of not listening to your customers, in the medium to long run? I am sure that we all know that for some companies, this cost has proved itself ruinous.

An attempt at a better definition (and better practices)

Now we can see why the marketing aim should be broader and at the same time more specific than that given in the above definitions.

Marketing should be considered as “the sum of those communication activities which help a product sell on itself”, to do so, marketing, like all “communication activities” should focus both on a good presentation of the product AND the feedback received by customers and should provide such feedback to the rest of the company as quick as possible.

Is it up to the marketing to change a product? Nope, but without adequate feedback who is charged with that task won’t be able to do it.

The first entry point for the feedback originating from users will usually be the Sales Department, as they will be the ones to serve customers directly, so it is very important that Marketing and Sales cooperate strictly on collecting that feedback, but the two departments remain charged with two very different tasks: marketing drives customers into the shop, providing them with address and info on the various products sold there, while sales are the ones directly serving customers inside the shop.

So if nobody comes to the shop, then it’s Marketing’s fault, while if a customer complains because he has not been served properly, or, in general, about the experience he had in the shop, then it’s Sales’ fault. But, as said, there’s also a third case: the customer might come to the shop, get served admirably, and still not buy anything. In this latter case, there’s some kind of problem with the product itself, and feedback is needed.

But you won’t get it trying to force it, or – worst of all – trying to conditionate it, to find out what you want to hear and already know.

Here is where white hat marketing comes into play, but, since this topic deserves to be thoroughly analyzed, I will delve into it deeper in the next article.