I understand what you’re saying, but if it were true advertisers would be spending less on marketing, when in fact they spend more every year.

One thing for sure, the internet and social media helps keep marketers honest. While marketers still need to spend money to get information they want out in the public domain, information they don’t want to get out moves faster than ever!

- Greg

Initially (historically), advertising and marketing started when commoditization became so common (18th century), that there was a pressing need to tell the market about peculiarities of one’s product/service. Market was full of what was perceived as same products and each producer had to tell what exactly was different or special about theirs.

So originally, marketers would pay for exposing information (what differences, advantages, return, value their product had over others) that the potential target pool of consumers might not have known or be aware of otherwise. Perhaps even the term marketing became standard at that time, as the notion of market for industrial age good became well-defined and delimited.

With age of Internet, there is little obstacle for anyone to find otu any information about anything. Companies as well have little to do to expose information about their offers.

Marketing was a means before. The rule implies – this is my perhaps erroneus understanding – that marketing is now not just means, it became an end in itself, by paying for customers instead of paying to reach customers.

I also remember an excellent presentation (during one of digital marketing seminars here in Cairo) by BDM of consumer goods of Kodak entitled “Good products do not sell themselves,” where he argued that when there is a valuable or good product, there is little need for hardcore marketing.

Does this make sense?

- Greg

- Greg

- Greg

- Greg