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That's conflating marketing and advertising when they're actually two different things. Think of marketing as the social component of design. You wouldn't sta
by tom_rath 18y ago
That's conflating marketing and advertising when they're actually two different things. Think of marketing as the social component of design.
You wouldn't start coding without at least a rudimentary spec to guide what it is you want to make, right? So why start designing your product without first identifying what and for whom it is you are designing it?
Marketing is the process of identifying the target market for your product. The "what it does" and "who it's for" part that a design needs if you're going to "build something people want".
- bdfh42 18y agoI think you nicely describe the planning part of marketing - but you have to include the execution where you reach out to your target market. Advertising (in all it's forms) is a crucial tool of marketing.
- tom_rath 18y agoExcept that advertising isn't marketing: It's advertising. They're different things related to your business and should be handled differently. I've run into a few companies who have painfully put an 'advertising guy' in charge of their marketing department and it's not worked well (in my limited sample). People are often great at advertising but couldn't put a decent product strategy together to save their life (or job!). You wouldn't put your web developer or icon designer in charge of system administration or database scaling, right? Just like non-coders tend to lump everything technical together as 'computer stuff', technical folks can fall into the trap of lumping accounting, marketing, advertising, etc. into the same batch as 'business stuff'. That path leads to madness.