So which is it?
This new thing I do, it exposes me to a lot of things. Branding, for one. Advertising for another. Marketing, for still a third.
Except--and I've put this to marketers and ad sales people and I get nowhere--there's no definable difference, from my perspective and the perspective of these other people, between marketing and advertising.
And then branding, you know, is just an aspect of one of those, right? So aren't these all words for the same thing? Yes or no, your ideas.
Here is the dictionary's stance:
Advertising: The activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media.
Marketing: the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service
So then, is marketing the umbrella under which advertising sits? Is marketing the thing that decides I want my hamburgers sold by asian kids with turn tables? Is advertising the actual kids that end up on my screen?
No, that kid with the hamburger and headphones is an ad. The final thing. The end of the advertising chain. So then, what's advertising, some middle thing between market research and the actual ad? What would that be? Wouldn't marketing handle what advertising claims to, distribution channels, message, all that stuff?
Teach me.
posted by Luke @ 11:57 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Luke, you've come to the right place. Or something like that.
I mostly inhabit the strange netherworld between marketing and advertising.
Marketing is the idea, the strategy, and the look and feel, the Brand. It works hand-in-hand with product development and positioning.
Advertising is the come-on. It's the slave to the marketing. It dresses up in the clothes that marketing designed and makes the pitch. It drives the sales.
So, Marketing creates your profile. Advertising posts it with your picture on the internet.
Marketing decides you need to work out more and figures out which colors you look best in; it assesses where you fit in and decides where you'd really rather look like you fit in. It studies the competition and how to beat them. It creates the wardrobe. It crafts the personality and develops the brand.
Advertising shows up at the party wearing the little black dress. It buys someone a drink and dances with them. It puts the offer on the table. Or the billboard or the 30-second spot.
So, Great Cheese Comes From Happy Cows, right? Marketing is the process of deciding to distinguish California Cheese from the rest, to create the look and feel of the packaging and how to display it at the store, and to develop the whole idea that California Cheese rocks. Advertising airs commercials with cows talking like surfers and hanging out on spectacular sunny California hillsides. It tries to make you go buy the happy cheese instead of the uptight cheese.
Marketing sees a dire need for 20-something males to (buy and) wear perfume, and takes a men's cologne and calls it a body spray named Axe. Advertising airs commercials showing women absolutely losing it around young men wearing Axe. (40-something men can hardly fathom their bad timing.)
Marketing determines the new colors of the San Diego Padres uniform and decides to attract whole families by giving away free beach towels and lapel pins on Saturday nights. Advertising tells you to come Saturday for a free towel and it reminds you the replica jerseys are on sale now at the souvenir shop. Marketing creates Thursday day games and calls them "business(wo)man specials", and Advertising tells you to take off work early for a day in the sun.
You should see me explain the designated hitter rule.
That's just about perfect, Don, thanks.
And by perfect I mean: delicious, evocative.
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