The Marketing of Marketing

Marketing has been part of our lives since the dawn of time. One can imagine the first humans who worshiped the sun. That star was planning and executing the conception, promotion and distribution of humanity. Its message was life. And we were the messengers. That big ball of fire – our first TV- would turn on every morning and show us how to grow, work and live.

Then marketing fell into the hands of organizations and lost its luster and purpose. There is no root for the word “marketing” which should be a hint as to whether it has any purpose here on earth. The closest origin would be the word marcatus, which means market or trading place, which might explain our obsession with trading in one kind of marketing for another.

Most of us are most familiar with Mass Marketing. That’s where the marketer sends one message out to everyone with the hope that all will be listening and later buying. Unfortunately, mass marketing became missed marketing as television lost its reception with America. You could call it “absenTVism.” People were no longer huddling around that big box. So marketing had to turn to other channels.

First came Direct Marketing. Spawned to make reach and frequency more laser like than buckshot, direct marketers targeted customers with specific interests. This weighty decision gave birth to junk mail. In the 70’s alone, the average weight of the Sunday paper, doubled.

By the 80′s, the world of marketing was besieged with Walkmans, cell phones, faxes and computers making selling very complicated. Welcome Presence Marketing. Here the idea was to fish where the fish were or get the message to where people were going to get away from messaging like concerts and ballparks. When that strategy started to strike out, we invented “Experiential Marketing.” Espousing that only “an experience” can change your mind, it became the new marketing. Marshall McLuhan would say, ” Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior.”

Later called “Surround Marketing” and then “Immersive Marketing”, Experiential Marketing created the backlash of “Permission Marketing. The theory here was that we customers would invite the company’s advertisements into our homes. We would actually ask to be bothered. Perhaps that is how Telemarketing found its way on to our dining room tables. After all, telemarketers always call at dinnertime. Don’t they?

Soon alternative media meant that a marketer had no alternative but to use it. Marketing was going ape! That’s when “Guerilla Marketing” hit the streets. Marketing now was warfare and that meant seizing all opportunities to capture customers. Battalions of students sold cars. Models sold beer. Companies would enlist anyone and everyone if they could ambush customers.

By the 90′s “Digital Marketing” created rapid exchange between buyers and sellers. It also created a new place to hang out – the Internet. Soon, marketers would conclude that if its not online, it’s not. This gave rise to “Viral Marketing” which like a virulent disease spreads fast and furiously until we are all consumed. There seems to be no cure for marketing’s permutations and mutations. Most recently, marketing has morphed into Narrowcasting. That would be the opposite of broadcasting born in the era of mass marketing. Ego marketing is now making its debut as a way to customize a message and market directly to a market of one – you. And then of course, there is Product-Placement Marketing that integrates products into movies in order to script you and then direct you to buy that product. Finally there is “NeuroMarketing” that actually looks at the blood flow in our brains to see if there is a buy button. By the way, there isn’t.

Perhaps, Supermarketing is just around the corner. In this world, marketing is all we do. We live in a virtual supermarket where products and services are marketed 24/7 and people are bagged like vegetables. On the other hand, we might “get back, get back to where we once belonged” as the Beatles’ lyrics suggest and remember how this all began. Let’s call this the new era of “ECO-Marketing.” Here, marketing returns to pay homage to the sun and serves the ultimate customer, the world itself. Here the power of marketing nurtures our nature for connection and helps us connect with nature. Sustainability in this new universe does not mean to survive at the expense of others but thrive along side each other. Marketing then exists to sell more than things. It promotes purpose. It creates action. And it saves a people and a planet that is just about spent.

Marketers need to ask themselves, “Are we messengers who forgot the message”. Their answer will determine the next iteration of marketing. And what’s next for society, itself.