Put the Me in Marketing, as an exhortation to think of you, the dynamic and talented person that you are, going into marketing. Good, now we've got that explained can we return to the more normal use of the language? Excellent.



Is still a common misapprehension that marketing is about having whizzy ideas that get people leaping up and down in orgasmic excitement at having the opportunity to purchase the new gadgetry. While that might indeed happen in a few soon to be abandoned old style units, the actual work of the marketeer is both more serious and more important. The whole concept of marketing and branding needs to be understood at its economic core before we head out the door to think up the advertising slogans at the creative workshop (the old synonym for this was 'pub').

Here's the problem that almost all companies face. Just about all of their competitors can make broadly the same things that they can. They are therefore left to compete, something that companies don't actually like doing as it depresses profits.

It is also true that amongst the potential customers there is an awful lot of money going missing, money that would look better in the corporate coffers. For there are those who will pay more for a product than others (there must be, basic economics, demand curves slope downwards). What is wanted is a way of differentiating the company's products from those of competitors and also a way of slicing and dicing the customer base so that those who are willing to pay more do indeed do so. The mechanism is branding: the creation and maintenance of brands is what marketeers do, what marketing is all about.

This level of realism (cynicism some might say), that marketeers exist to protect their employers from the buffeting of free markets might or might not help in the recruitment process. Your consultant at Talisman will be able to tell whether such bracing truth telling is likely to help in a particular context or not. However, before you start to think that perhaps there really ought to be a you in marketing, it is worth working out what the real job is: it isn't sloganeering, mere aiding in pumping the gear out of the factory and off the shelves, it is, by the way in which branding allows premium prices to be charged, the very thing that keeps most companies afloat.