Godin’s extremist take on marketing
What truly is marketing?
There are those who hold a very narrow definition of it. Marketing comprises a known and limited set of functions and activities: brand creation, selling proposition, logo, slogan, advertising, collateral, website, and so forth. Each of these discrete components has its owner; the component are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. Though there is room for dynamism, in this view marketing is fully the sum of its parts. This is the traditional, and likely still majority, view, though one much derided by commentators.
Much more can and has been ascribed to marketing. In this view, marketing is more than the sum of its parts: it is the geist of the company–its soul, spirit, or fundamental essence. It is what its adherents hang on to when all the gilding and veneer have been stripped away. Even more, marketing acts as a type of credo to inform and inhabit every unscripted interaction between customer and brand. Says Godin: “Marketing is what happens in between the overt acts of the marketer.”
This view will appeal to many, no doubt, but it has its flaws. If marketing encompasses both scripted and unscripted moments, then its purview is unlimited. For, if marketing is everything, then it is also nothing, in the sense that there is no way to define and delimit its ambit. Simply put: every employee in a company has to perpetually be marketing, from the CEO down to the guy who sweeps the floors after the lunch-hour rush. And so the grumbling waiters of Godin’s fancy, who’ve may have just been asked to double shift on a night where they were supposed to see their kids, must be made to smile and nod and be courteous for the sake of marketing. Of course, you might say that a good marketer would be empathic, and would give the waiters the night off, if only to avoid the bad optics that accompany the sight of disgruntled employees. But a good marketer could just as easily fire the poor wretches and replace them with pliable stiffs, more habituated to smiling.
I suspect these viewpoints represent extremes, with many other definitions in between, none of which is more right than the other; indeed, all definitions are probably incommensurable. But as a marketer, you better be damn sure you know what definition your bosses, team members, and underlyings adhere to.
