Okay...am not taking your interview. But think of it, isn't this the first question that's put to any one remotely associated to marketing? Thanks to the American associations and the Kotlers and Kellers of the world, we have umpteen definitions of marketing. With all due regards to them, I have a problem with all those definitions. I do not conform to any of them.
Before you get all set to sue me or abandon me, spare a thought. Did you not feel that marketing is such a huge thing to be fit into a small definition? Well, I for one, felt so. It's definitely the process that starts from conceptualizing your product to working on the attributes to developing your channels to getting it to the customer....(phew). The beauty of marketing is much more than that.
Marketing for me is everywhere. You wake up in the morning and decide to cajole your mom to get a cup of coffee though it's half past 11. You need to sell your point why you wake up late. You then realise that it's getting late for that lunch date with your loyal girl friend. You need to increase the customer satisfaction (okk...that's a very rude word to be substituted for a girl, but by no means am an MCP - male chauvinistic pig) by promoting the loyality benefits - trip to Imax with a dinner at Taj thrown in the mix.
You prepare for a meeting with your manager deciding on how to sell your points and market your thoughts. You come out of the meeting extremely pissed off with the attitude of some of the channel members (read, project mates etc) and decide to strategise your plan. You work on an alternative channel strategy to tackle the monster at hand. You get a call from your marriage bureau and you realise that it's time to update your product portofolio.
Marketing is ubiquitous...we don the hat of a marketer every minute and we master most of the tasks. And still we look into books to understand what marketing is...
Interesting thoughts and good presentation as usual :).. Hope to see more nice articles in future..
ReplyDeleteVery true dude. Even the commonly accepted societal norms and ideas are accepted because they were marketed well. There might be a large number of people who might have come up with lots of ideas and thoughts but they didnt catch on well with the people because they weren't marketed well enough.
ReplyDeleteHoping to see more insights and lateral thoughts from you.
To some extent I do agree with what you want to say... but then... every field of study (not only management but even science) can be seen with this viewpoint. Be it biology (of your sound sleep till 11:30), chemistry (Caffeine present in your coffee) or psychology (of your Girlfriend)... everything is everywhere at every point of time. May be that's why they equate knowledge to GOD... omnipresent... ubiquitous.
ReplyDeletevery good, Sridhar, Bhamidi. Keep it up
ReplyDelete@ Maddy
ReplyDeleteYeah, may be true. But as you know, I have this myopia called marketing and do not see beyond that ;)