Marketing vs marketers

I don’t care about marketing.

I don’t read any industry publications. I’ve never read a marketing book. (For real.) The lone marketing thinkers I admire and follow talk about things equally suited for categories like entrepreneurship, creativity, and psychology.

I don’t care about marketing. I care about marketers.

Logos don’t create stuff. Channels don’t inspire positive change. People do. And the people I feel have the most leverage to change our culture are marketers.

Marketers understand other people and how to serve them. Marketers don’t pander to the status quo. They don’t just hand others what they say they want. They give them what they know they need. Product managers do that for products. Marketers do that for content.

If product managers help people execute in ways they never thought possible, then marketers help people think in ways that unlock new possibilities.

Or at least, that’s how it should be.

It should be the case that marketers make better things. We can use the leverage of a thriving business model behind us (as opposed to the ad-supported media model) for the greater good, not ever more, more, more for ourselves.

Seth Godin has talked often about selfish marketers, and I never knew what he meant. I thought he meant the obvious hucksters and spammers, but that’s just one form of selfishness: grabbing at yours without caring how you affect others.

But there’s a more insidious form of selfishness among marketers, which is to squander the leverage you’ve been granted. You’re in a position to make positive change, to help others, and to create experiences that inspire action… but do you see it that way? Or do you operate with the mantra of Don’t Get Fired? Do you see the job as a race towards more, towards hitting numbers for numbers’ sake, or towards better?

Today, you’ll face a choice. You can agree to pander to the status quo. You can keep doing things the same way. You can publish stuff that a chart says people want. Or you can use your leverage to create change, to advocate for a better approach internally and inspire others externally — not by giving them what they say they want but by showing them what you know they need.

I don’t care about marketing. I care about what marketing does. I care about what marketing could be. I care about the people responsible for all of that.

Marketers. Doing their jobs — their real jobs. Generously.