The way we dress, speak, walk, work, and project ourselves is all strategic communication. There’s also nothing wrong with this. I’m sorry to respond so late after the post was made, but I enjoyed reading it and found it to be a refreshing perspective.

Cheers

A wild, abstract idea…maybe I shouldn’t be blogging at 2am, lol. =)

After graduating with a BS in mechanical engineering, I got a “street degree” in business with a emphasis in marketing. I started my first company with no more than a business plan and 20-something hubris. I was an ad agency copywriter and became its creative director. I’ve consulted and coached hundreds of companies from 2 guys in a garage to one of the nation’s largest retailers. In academia, marketing is everything. In the real world, marketing is promotion. Sales is everything else. I once had the VP International Sales & Marketing of a F1000 company confide that he didn’t really understand what marketing was, he just knew that it cost him money.

First, thanks for your comment. I would agree with you that when people, groups or orgs practice marketing…much more effort is spent on promotional efforts, rather than the other 3 P’s…one of these being product. Personally, I have a J-School background in advertising, hence, much of my focus and academic training focused on promotion efforts. It’s only been through conducting my masters thesis that my eyes have been opened to the real implications of what a wider scope of marketing entails including: product design, organizational development, business procedures and more…all of which can fall under the umbrella of marketing. And, to your point about studying markets and economics….the more research and collaboration with other practices the better in my book.

and I agree with you @Nedra, that every choice we make carries with it a consequence of influence…so perhaps, everything isn’t marketing…but everything involves influence or strategy.

@rkenneth

I liked your story of the SMILE man. Sometime, life’s reminders come from perhaps the most unexpected places. Thanks for sharing! =)

As Levitt said…”you must seriously orient your entire operation toward discovering the customer’s total needs and problems and then satisfying them, even if it takes you beyond what you now believe is your range of abilities and interests.” It seems that this is marketing or a real marketing orientation for an organization. By the way, this was published in 1962.

Typically customer needs are a complex bundle of value satisfactions, both rational and emotional.

It seems the CMO job tends to brand or product campaigns and problems. Yet, in the truer marketing sense, shouldn’t the job focus on a sensitive, continuous analysis of business opportunities based on systematic study of markets and economics?