I was once part of a meeting with about six other marketing leaders where 45 minutes was spent discussing what the menu would be for a corporate offsite event.
Not an event for clients or potential clients. Not an event to generate brand awareness or qualified leads. An event for current employees across various departments for the usual corporate planning and strategy sessions and revelry.
No marketing would be happening at this event, yet the marketing department was in charge of it. Why?
I suppose the logic (if you can call it that) is that marketing does events — which is true in that marketing will sometimes host, sponsor, or attend an event in order to accomplish marketing things. But the concept of events isn’t specific to marketing.
Finance uses spreadsheets constantly, but they are not the final arbiters of all things spreadsheets. HR, sales, operations, and marketing don’t all go to finance and force them to be in charge of all spreadsheet development and execution. Departments own outcomes, not tools.
Though it may seem like it, this is not a rant about events. This is a rant about definitions. Because blurred definitions are part of what blur boundaries of responsibility.
I know I'm just some guy, and that the American Marketing Association (AMA) is an actual authority in this space, but their definition of marketing baffles me:
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
Much of what's in there I have no problem with. But if I'm parsing this correctly (and I am) this definition includes the statement that: "Marketing is the activity and processes for creating and delivering offerings."
Is the AMA really saying that marketing is creating offerings and delivering offerings? Creating an offering falls under product development, R&D, or the core business strategy. Delivering it is operations, logistics, or customer success. Marketing is certainly communicating the offering — positioning, messaging, and awareness-building — but we're not the ones doing product development or delivery.
This isn't just semantic nitpicking (it is semantic nitpicking; it’s not just semantic nitpicking) because if marketing, as a discipline, is defined as everything then it becomes responsible for everything — and is often then respected for nothing.
Maybe this is just my lived experience and every other marketer has been able to devote the majority of their time to actual marketing (i.e. building awareness of a company's products or services among current and potential customers) but it seems like marketing gets assigned work based on vibes instead of on objectives, leading to expectation inflation and role confusion.
Part of the reason this happens is unavoidable organizational overlap. Designers will often be part of the marketing department, but they design much more than just marketing deliverables. If HR needs a new welcome packet for employees, they’ll likely enlist designers; but that doesn’t magically transform a new employee welcome packet into a marketing deliverable.
The other, more significant reason this happens is because we marketers are pushovers. As a discipline, marketing has been loved and hated and tossed back and forth among various departments so many times that we’re desperate to be appreciated.
We’ll do anything.
Want us to plan, develop, and maintain the company’s intranet? Of course!
Need a new script for your customer service reps? Happy to help!
Not sure what CMS we should use for the new website? We’ll look into it and come back with a recommendation!
None of that is marketing, but we do it anyway — and then we wonder why no one understands what marketing actually is or does.
Marketing is the discipline responsible for building awareness among target audiences and driving demand for a company’s offerings. The more we accept work that isn’t marketing, the harder it becomes to defend the work that is.
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