The ideas of marketing and advertising have an extremely
modern connotation. We think of Super Bowl Ads, scratch and sniff perfume ads,
or the ads that appear at the beginning of YouTube videos that we skip the
second we can. We think of constantly being induced to buy. To us, our
ad-filled world is one of a kind, never before seen in history. To an extent,
this is true. The concept of “marketing” has only been around since the
beginning of the twentieth century, when scholars began systematizing ways that
we can better create value for consumers in the form of products. But marketing
has existed without a name for as long as there have been people with something
to sell and reason to buy. This is because marketing is a social institution,
as much as democracy and even language, which has evolved with us over the
ages.
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In the past, as now, people got together to exchange. In
Roman days, people went to the Forum to, say, buy their meat at the Forum
Boarium. With every interaction with vendors, people exchanged not only money
and meat, but a bit of information about themselves, a tiny glimpse into their
preferences, and by extension, their nature. A savvy Roman shopkeeper could
take that interaction and draw the line between his own interests and the
interests of his customer, and a relationship was born. All trade, then, is
communication. And communication changes. I spoke with my old Bishop, who is
also the CMO of Priceline, and this principle has been his experience even
within the last ten years. How he would have advertised fifty to a hundred
years ago is wildly different from how he would advertise now. The reason is
because the media of communication provide opportunity to engender a
relationship with people, and marketers are people too. Changing communication
means changing opportunities. In the old days, advertising was word of mouth;
in today’s world there are a staggering number of ways companies and
organizations communicate, and thus, advertise.
Dr. Chuck Hermans of Missouri State University states that
given the history of trade, “…marketing has always existed” and more
importantly, that “Marketing must not be regarded as merely business practice,
but as a social institution.” Marketing, then, is the communication of trade.
And it isn’t a one-way conversation. What we see in a good ad is more or less a
reflection of who we think we are or who we want to become, and marketers
wouldn’t know that unless we told them. How we tell them is a different story
altogether. But one thing is clear: it’s all communication.
The History of
Marketing Thought
Ancient Roman Trade
I never considered marketing a two way communication, which thinking about it now makes a lot of sense. That is the whole intent like you said, the Romans would exchange, and that is still to this day what we do.
ReplyDeleteThat was a sick Derek Jeter ad! He retired when I was on my mission, so I missed the whole farewell season. Seeing this ad made me wonder how baseball was advertised and marketed before television was invented.
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