"Everybody thinks they are good at it and wants to do it" No kidding.
And now that I have your attention, credit for the headline grabbing line goes to Lance Weatherby (Enfuse Group) from his comment on David Hornik's recent post -"VC's are marketing geniuses" [ok, stop smirking...some of them actually are].
If you know David, you know he is being a bit self-effacing (what I love about him). One important, often overlooked point that he writes about is that;
"The best marketing often springs out of the characteristics of the product or service being promoted. In some instances, those viral characteristics have been designed into the product itself."
Yes, yes, yes.
I have spoken about the importance of integrating marketing into product design in the past and the more I work with companies on "social media marketing" the more relevant this issue becomes. Christine Herron has a great summary post on his FOO Camp talk that compares marketing to syphilis. [Can we please stop referring to the important role of communicating the value of your company and products as an infectious disease]
No company today can afford to lob products over to marketing, pr, bizdev, or customer service. Even if you are smart enough to iterate product development, marketing should be baked into every fiber of your organization. And by marketing I mean - thinking of the customer first and how to ensure your are creating something viral and vital, not tacking it on later. This is not a new concept. Seth Godin and others have been talking about "sneezing" and "viral marketing" for years.
So, what is new in the buzz, viral, sneezing universe? On the surface it may appear not a heck of a lot. Looks can be deceiving. Time to market is shorter and the viral tools available to you and your customers are multiplying every day. Amplifying all of this is that your customers have more control and power than ever and they are uniting - with or without you.
This is an important reminder to organizations of all sizes not to think in silos. The basic ingredients (definitions and dividing lines) of marketing, product and bizdev need to be shaken up and stirred and combined in new ways to ensure the final product bakes up right!
Addendum:
I just noticed that Pete Blackshaw has a related post on the increasingly blurred role between marketing & pr and how in the not too distant future;
"we'll see a host of brand spanking new titles emerge across the corporate brandscape that attempt to straddle (embrace, integrate, capture..however you see it) the tension, among them:
- Chief Communication Officer
- Chief Message Officer
- VP, Brand Equity
- VP, Stakeholder Relations
- Chief Marketing & Influencer Relations Officer
I could not agree more and I would add that another blurring area is between Marketing & Business Development.
