Comments on: Telling comparisons: a cultural analytic http://cultureby.com/2007/04/telling_compari.html This Blog Sits At the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics Wed, 23 May 2012 20:32:12 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: DMcCunney http://cultureby.com/2007/04/telling_compari.html/comment-page-1#comment-3039 DMcCunney Mon, 23 Apr 2007 19:07:13 +0000 http://localhost/wp_culture/?p=490#comment-3039 "Today, I was thinking about how much interesting stuff about marketing appears in the pages of Fast Company. And I wondered whether Fast Company had maybe not done us the very great favor of smuggling marketing discourse back into serious treatment. I mean this is a field that gets it from all sides. The liberal left think it's the work of the devil. The intellectual world believes it an exercise is stupidity. The b-school world regards marketing as a dark art, one that must struggle without the aid of metrics. Fast Company has done us the very great honor of taking the field seriously, showing that it is not a moral dubious exercise engaged in manipulation, not a field of simple problems pursued by simple people, and not a dark art that makes up with guess work what it lacks in metrics. Thank you, Fast Company." ---- While I don't read Fast Company (nor HBR, save on occasion), I'm reminded of Peter F. Drucker's dictum "The job of business is to *create* a market." (Emphasis mine) Marketing isn't about selling people stuff they don't need, though too many enterprises substitute that for the real thing. Marketing is is about figuring out what people *do* need, and providing it. In the best cases, what is provided will be something people never realized they needed until it was there and they wondered how they got on without it. As such, marketing is the primary responsibility of the CEO and senior management, not just a "Marketing Department". It's part of an evolving gestalt of what the company is, what it offers, who the customers are, and what they need. As Drucker also pointed out, revenue comes from *outside* of the enterprise. You survive and prosper by providing goods and services the customer needs, at a price the customer is willing to pay. Too many companies make maximizing profit the goal. This puts the cart firmly before the horse. The goal is to survive -- to be able to open your doors and do more business with your customers tomorrow. To do so, you must be profitable, but profit is a means to that end, and not the end itself. Forget that, and you join the corpses of countless enterprises that put short term gain first, at the expense of long term survival. “Today, I was thinking about how much interesting stuff about marketing appears in the pages of Fast Company. And I wondered whether Fast Company had maybe not done us the very great favor of smuggling marketing discourse back into serious treatment. I mean this is a field that gets it from all sides. The liberal left think it’s the work of the devil. The intellectual world believes it an exercise is stupidity. The b-school world regards marketing as a dark art, one that must struggle without the aid of metrics. Fast Company has done us the very great honor of taking the field seriously, showing that it is not a moral dubious exercise engaged in manipulation, not a field of simple problems pursued by simple people, and not a dark art that makes up with guess work what it lacks in metrics. Thank you, Fast Company.”
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While I don’t read Fast Company (nor HBR, save on occasion), I’m reminded of Peter F. Drucker’s dictum “The job of business is to *create* a market.” (Emphasis mine)

Marketing isn’t about selling people stuff they don’t need, though too many enterprises substitute that for the real thing. Marketing is is about figuring out what people *do* need, and providing it. In the best cases, what is provided will be something people never realized they needed until it was there and they wondered how they got on without it.

As such, marketing is the primary responsibility of the CEO and senior management, not just a “Marketing Department”. It’s part of an evolving gestalt of what the company is, what it offers, who the customers are, and what they need. As Drucker also pointed out, revenue comes from *outside* of the enterprise. You survive and prosper by providing goods and services the customer needs, at a price the customer is willing to pay.

Too many companies make maximizing profit the goal. This puts the cart firmly before the horse. The goal is to survive — to be able to open your doors and do more business with your customers tomorrow. To do so, you must be profitable, but profit is a means to that end, and not the end itself. Forget that, and you join the corpses of countless enterprises that put short term gain first, at the expense of long term survival.

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