Everyone Markets


When I was in university, a long time ago, I majored in Accounting and Management. At that time my interest in marketing was so lacking that I only grudgingly took the first year required Marketing credit, Advertising. You see, I sort of felt that marketing was vaguely seedy and extremely creative. And that I was neither.

What I know now is that marketing can still be seedy, but it doesn't have to be. And creativity comes in many forms.

There’s one other factor to successful marketing: flawless execution. All that has come before is quickly negated by sloppy presentation.

I became a marketer without ever making a conscious decision to do so. I’m still not very seedy, and not a creative genius. But I can plan and I can execute like there’s no tomorrow. Making it happen is where I make a difference, sometimes the difference between success and failure.

I still have that big heavy Advertising textbook and I’m not sure why I've kept it. It’s clearly outdated for an industry that has changed so much. Email marketing, websites and social media were only vague ideas back then. And marketing was the purview of agencies. Now, pretty much everyone markets something, from resumes to garage sales to product line introductions.



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