The Bullshit business

Doing some research for a potential client meeting and I came across this gem:

"To get real, marketing has to get out of the bullshit business. And it can't do that while it isn't touching customers. To touch customers, marketing has to solve a political problem with sales, which is the main corporate organ tasked with touching customers directly. As I said in that last link, threre's a good reason why VPs of Sales & Marketing tend to come from Sales."

Thank you, Doc Searls.

Comments

[Doc Searls]

You're welcome.

Is it possible for marketing to have *more* customer interaction, and to be *more* of a customer advocate, than sales?

If so, is it still "marketing"?

Just wondering.

Best,

Doc

[Simon Collister]

Hi Doc. Thanks for stopping by.

Good question. I suppose the answer is it's possible for marekting to have a greater interaction with the consumer, but then there comes a point where the function stops becoming marketing.

In fact, is it fair to say that given the internet-enabled move for almost anyone within the company to reach out to individual customers, there will come a point when everybody working for the firm will have a marketing/PR role, a sales role, a new biz role etc etc?

I'd be interested to see where you think PR fits into the picture. Not PR as marketing communications but as a tool to represent (honestly and openly) the company to the public and vice-versa.

Ironically,the latter PR function role is one of the founding practices in PR theory - except some parts of the industry also seem to have got lost in the Bullshit Business somewhere along the line!