Skip to main content

Marketing vs. advertising.

 

In early February, I was disillusioned.

As part of my project to write a manifesto of sorts about what content marketing is, and how it's different from advertising, I read, and re-read, two short paragraphs I wrote ages ago, not quite happy with them but unable to revise them, unable to add more.

At its worst, marketing and advertising create in people the desire to buy products and services that they don’t actually need. Preying on weaknesses and insecurities.


At its best, marketing makes people’s lives easier. It tells people what products, services, and information are out there to help them achieve more and do better.


As I wrangled over concepts and thoughts, agonizing to find the right words, and fully empathizing with Prufock (not to bring Saussure and Lacan into the equation) – because it really is impossible to say just what I mean – I was shaken out of my torpor by our Creative Director and one of the Junior Art Directors.

Our discussion meandered, and eventually ended up on the marketing vs. advertising debate. I took pages and pages of notes, but they're irrelevant because our Creative Director encapsulated it with perfect simplicity:

Marketing :: advertising


Engineering :: architecture


So though I haven't yet finished my manifesto on content marketing, I was able to add a sentence to my musings:

As for advertising? At its best, it's pure art and aesthetics, with the association to the brand feeling almost incidental.

Comments

Post a comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stylus talk review: "The groups that will shape the commercial landscape in 2019."

Trends and insights researcher Stylus gave a presentation on  "The groups that will shape the commercial landscape in 2019"  on Tuesday, February 12 – here's my roundup (with extensive commentary). TL;DR: Interesting in terms of hearing about big and small trends (and the Zeitgeist in general), but also relatively niche and very US-focused. It was definitely about the "haves" rather than "have nots" – though that makes commercial sense I suppose. Also: I'm not entirely sold on the figures cited... Still, events like these are definitely worthwhile because with the insane amounts of information out there, anything that can shed light on what some of the distinct trends are, and where we're headed, makes the infoscape a bit more navigable. The speakers' main points: Don't just focus on Millennials and consider the "new" lifestyles which people are embracing – specifically... 1) "Supercharged Kids" Basically: the rise
Post a comment
Read more

Reading Raj Patel’s “The Value of Nothing” in an advertising context.

The more I read about the theory of advertising (which is plenty, thanks to my upcoming IPA Eff Test), the more it seems just inextricably linked to other disciplines. Psychology and sociology are pretty much a given – the better we understand how people’s minds and social structures work, the better we can sell to them. But there’s also a huge economic dimension to advertising. Specifically, so much of advertising relates to the process of value creation. Though my Comparative Literature course included ample Marx, Engels, Veblen, and Benjamin, it’s a concept that I’m still working to fully understand. That’s why I was very happy to come across Raj Patel’s The Value of Nothing . At its core, it’s a fundamental examination of why things cost what they do – though it also goes far beyond that as the subtitle, “How to reshape market society and redefine democracy,” suggests. One of the best parts is where Patel explains why “a burger grown from beef raised on clear-cut forest should rea
Post a comment
Read more

Digested Read: How (Not) To Plan, Section 2.

Product, Price, Place! Introduction Marketers tend to focus overly much on Promotion, ignoring other three Ps. 2.1 Brands Can(not) Live Forever "Brands don't have life cycles," a theory which the longevity of Heinz, Kellogg's, and Hovis apparently support. "If there is any 'life cycle,' it's a brand management cycle." Phase 1: Brand launch with strong marketing support and ROI. Phase 2: Sales plateau – marketing needs to maintain and depend the brand and gets less management attention; budgets are cut. Phase 3: The cuts lead to declining sales; brand owners retaliate with price promotions which deliver short-term sales but damage the brand image (further affecting sales). The Boston Matrix of Cash Cows and Stars should be applied to categories, not brands. Checklist "Aim for brand immortality" Always invest in continuous advertising [Comment: A recurrent theme ] Share and Voice and Share of Market can help you estimate how much
Post a comment
Read more