Some marketing personnel plan special events, orchestrating face-to-face conversations with potential and current customers in a special setting.

CHAPTER 1 WHAT IS MARKETING? 13

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New graduates like Carly Sedberry are finding work in the marketing field to be rewarding.

Photo courtesy of Kevin J. Hamm

advertising mix. Many people who work in advertising spend all their time creating advertising for electronic media, such as websites and their pop-up ads, podcasts, and the like.

< Product development. People in product development are responsible for identifying and creating features that meet the needs of a firm’s customers. They often work with engineers or other technical personnel to ensure that value is created.

< Direct marketing. Professionals in direct marketing communicate directly with customers about a company’s product offerings via channels such as email, chat lines, telephone, or direct mail.

< Digital marketing. Digital marketing professionals combine advertising, direct marketing, and other areas of marketing to communicate directly with customers via social media, the Web, and mobile media (including texts). They also work with statisticians in order to determine which consumers receive which message and with IT professionals to create the right look and feel of digital media.

< Event marketing. Some marketing personnel plan special events, orchestrating face-to-face conversations with potential and current customers in a special setting.

< Nonprofit marketing. Nonprofit marketers often don’t get to do everything listed previously as nonprofits typically have smaller budgets. But their work is always very important as they try to change behaviors without having a product to sell.

A career in marketing can begin in a number of different ways. Entry-level positions for new college graduates are available in many of the positions previously mentioned. Carly Sedberry, a 2014 graduate of the University of Missouri in Columbia, initially majored in broadcast journalism, but found herself yearning for more opportunities to satisfy her creative side and work with creative people. So, Sedberry switched her major to strategic communication. Today she’s an account executive for the Dallas advertising agency Slingshot. How does she like her job? “As an account executive, I am a part of the process from the beginning, so seeing how an amazing idea can come to life is something I will never get tired of,” she says. “Which brings me to the most rewarding thing about my job: the end product. When my client is happy about the work we did and my team is proud of the work we did, nothing is better than that.”

A growing number of CEOs are people with marketing backgrounds. Some le- gendary CEOs like Ross Perot, the founder of Electronic Data Systems, and Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, got their start in marketing. More recently, Mark Hurd, the CEO of Oracle, and Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of GE, are showing how marketing careers can lead to the highest pinnacles of an organization.

3.6 Criticisms of Marketing Marketing is not without its critics. False advertising and deceptive marketing practices, even by seem- ingly reputable companies, are on ongoing concern. A couple of years ago, the consumer electronics company Nokia was forced to apologize for implying that a video it used in its ads to promote one of its smart phones was taken with the phone when it wasn’t.[3] The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued the shoemaker Reebok for its ads claiming the company’s “Easy Tone” sneakers improved the tone of people’s legs and backsides better than other sneakers. The FTC said the claims were “over-hyped,” and the company ultimately agreed to issue $25 million in customer refunds to settle the FTC’s lawsuit.[4]

We already mentioned that one reason to study marketing is because it is costly, and business lead- ers need to understand the cost/benefit ratio of marketing in order to make wise investments. Yet that cost is precisely why some criticize marketing. If that money could be put into research and develop- ment of new products, perhaps the consumers would be better satisfied. Or, some critics argue, prices could be lowered. Marketing executives, though, are always on the lookout for less expensive ways to achieve the same performance, and do not intentionally waste money on marketing. For example, as you will learn later in the book, digital marketing is allowing companies to more accurately target cus- tomers with ads for products they are truly interested in rather than those they are not.

Yet another criticism of marketing is that it fuels consumerism, which is the tendency of consumers to want more and more products and services they don’t really need. Fashion marketing creates demand for high-dollar jeans when much less expensive jeans can fulfill the same basic func- tion. Taken to the extreme, consumers may take on significant amounts of credit-card debt to satisfy the wants created by marketing. The critics of consumerism also argue that the demand for products marketing creates leads to more manufacturing and pollution than is necessary, which harms the environment.

14 PRINCIPLES OF MARKETING VERSION 3.0

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societal marketing orientation

A marketing orientation that states that in addition to selling products to customers and delivering profits to shareholders, a company’s marketing efforts should be aimed at improving the well-being of society and the world in general.

Concerns such as these are persuading more companies to take a societal marketing orientation, which holds that a company’s marketing efforts should not be aimed only at delivering products to customers and profits to shareholders but ultimately improve the well-being of society and the world in general.

The outdoor-clothing maker Patagonia has a societal marketing orientation. To draw attention to the problem of consumerism, Patagonia actually ran ads showing one of its jackets with a headline that read “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” The company was trying to actually persuade people not to consume products—even its own products—if they don’t need them. The ad campaign received a lot of atten- tion, in part because people were who saw it wondered why a company would want to not sell its products. Ironically, instead of Patagonia’s sales falling, they climbed as a result of the ad campaign.[5]

FIGURE 1.4

Why did Patagonia run this ad? Because it cares about the environment. The company knows that if the environment gets polluted, you won’t want to spend much time outdoors or buy a lot of its outdoor-oriented clothing.

Source: Used with permission from Patagonia, Inc.

Part of the reason Patagonia’s sales climbed is that people are looking more favorably on companies that have a societal marketing orientation. The Fair Trade Certification movement emerged in re- sponse to people wanting to do business with firms that consider the good of society when making and selling products. To have their products Fair Trade Certified firms have to meet certain criteria. The criteria include, among other things, ensuring that the factories and production methods used to pro- duce their products meet certain environmental goals, that the facilities are safe, and that people who work in them are paid fair wages and provided with good working conditions.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

By facilitating transactions, marketing delivers value to both consumers and firms. At the broader level, this process creates jobs and improves the quality of life in a society. Marketing can be costly, so firms need to hire good people to manage their marketing activities. Being responsible for both making money for your com- pany and delivering satisfaction to your customers makes marketing a great career. Marketing has its critics though. False and deceptive advertising has long been a problem people are concerned about. Other people believe marketing simply increases the price people have to pay for products. Still other people are concerned marketing leads to consumerism, which is the tendency of consumers to want more and more products and services they don’t really need. For reasons such as these, more companies today are pursuing a societal mar- keting orientation. In addition to delivering products to their customers and profits to their shareholders, these companies actively strive to improve the well-being of society and the world in general.