Keyword ‘rhetoric’

Marketing

We’re not all marketers now

It's not marketing that needs to be more pervasive in organizations. It's people who care about customers.

July 16th, 2011 by Andrew Swenson

image credit LongitudeLatitude on Flickr

Perhaps I’m just piddling in semantics, but it really bothers me when the “marketing” term is applied to any and every customer-facing activity. Lately it seems that anyone with a Twitter account is considered “doing marketing.”

The McKinsey Quarterly, published by the international management consultancy McKinsey & Company, is the latest to elevate the claim that “we’re all marketers now” with an article of the same name.  In fact, authors Tom French, Laura LaBerge, and Paul Magill make some relatively lofty proclamations (emphasis original):

Marketing

Evil, Ancient Greece, and other Marketing Stuff

December 29th, 2009 by Andrew Swenson
image credit: Raymond Yee

image credit: Raymond Yee

Is marketing evil?

When Seth Godin pondered the question earlier this year, he came to this conclusion:

Just because you can market something doesn’t mean you should. You’ve got the power, so you’re responsible, regardless of what your boss tells you to do.

Last night in a Twitter exchange with Jessica Gottlieb (@JessicaGottlieb) about how people market and sell, I suggested that the question isn’t anything new. In fact, I think it dates back a few millennia…

[Disclaimer: this post is purposefully philosophy light.
Email theword[at]wordpost[dot]org if you’re craving discourse on metaphysics]