Lesson 1: What is Marketing

The key learning point this week is that marketing is a lot more complicated and broad than I had ever assumed.  Without much experience in business (I have spent over 12 years of my career as a Naval Aviator), Sales and Marketing have always been blurred roles, and it is easy to think of the two as the same thing.  The first reading from Marketing Plan Handbook dispelled that notion.  Sales is basically selling, but Marketing is so much more.  The text states that marketing is "everything the company is and does to consistently provide competitively-superior value to win customers and earn their ongoing loyalty."  Looking at the contents of a marketing plan makes it clear that marketing involves every aspect of the business, from creating a thorough understanding of customer needs to develop a product to the marketing program's mixture of the 4 P's, financial and operational plans, and metrics to ensure an initiative is successful.

The material I read/watched/reviewed this week included:

Chapter 1, Marketing Plan Handbook
Jeff Bezos video on YouTube
Week 1 Slides
HBR Article: Marketing Myopia

Additionally, I contributed to the class Wiki, where I took a stab at the definition of marketing.  I wasn't too far off, as I knew that the concept of creating value for the customer is a key pillar. 

Marketing Myopia was an outstanding article, and really helped me gain perspective on how critical and wide-ranging the subject is.  I have often wondered why more companies don't engage in creative destruction to ensure their ongoing competitiveness.  It was interesting to read the critical views on the oil industry not taking the lead in new energy development.  The idea of framing your industry in terms that permits managers to see new opportunities is key to long-term survival.  Levitt argues that the railroad industry wouldn't have suffered its decline had it thought of itself as simply being in the transportation business.  However, it is always easier to see in hindsight why a company should have anticipated how new industry, products, or production methods would make old ones obsolete.  But the overall point was well-taken, that companies like Exxon or BP should be the ones to develop alternative energy forms so they control their destinies.  Better technology will eventually win out.

Bezos' video was really interesting.   While he had multiple things he 'knew', the one that sticks out to me is obsessing over customers.  I have no trouble believing that this is crucial to exceptional performance, but the problem is learning what that means.  Learning 'how' to obsess over customers is what I'm hoping to learn in the coming weeks.