May 24, 2026 Seeds

Marketing

The history of marketing

Many historians believe that the concept of marketing started as early as 1500 BCE when Mesopotamian societies started mass production of goods that required quality control.
Producers would stamp their goods with a signature mark which is the earliest form of a logo.
This signifies to buyers who created the product
In 1450 CE, Johannes Gutenburg invited the printing press which allowed for mass reproduction of logos on many forms of paper medium
- this allowed producers to reach a larger audience with books, posters, and papers
- earliest form of print advertising
magazines introduced in 1730s by Edward Cave who dubbed the word "magazine" from Arabic word "makhazin" meaning storehouse
- created appeal by including essays, poems, stories, and political musings
- new form of information sharing
Billboards created on street railways in 1850 CE
- First billboard occurred in 1867
- Used a lot by governments during World War I and World War II
Burma-shave company was founded in 1925 and became famous for its clever advertising slogans. It was typically made of up six small panels containing a fragment of a rhyming verse.
- you would read the verses as you drive by and the final panel always contained the Burna-Shave logo
- Worked well for brand recognition, helping them reach number 2 position among shaving creams
from 1920s onwards, radio advertising was created and AT&T paid $100 for a 10-minute advertisement to promote Long Island apartments
by 1930, nearly 90% of all radio stations in the country were broadcasting radio ads
1941 - TV ads started
- first ad by Bulova Watch Co., cost $9
1970 ushered in supercomputers that could fit on a single office desk
- created opportunity for E-commerce promotions, spam email, and guerilla marketing
1995 when Yahoo & Google became prominent
- mass development of websites led search engines to develop technology to filter out unnecessary information based on what users were searching
- SEO allowed companies to better understand their consumers, what they wanted and how they reacted to particular campaigns, and what they may react to in the future
- This created intuitive and in-depth approach to marketing that focussed more on curated content for specific audiences rather than interruptive content

The importance of marketing

marketing is a key driver of business ^[1]
"Because its purpose is to create a customer the business enterprise has two—and only these two—basic functions: marketing and innovation." - Peter Drucker, business management guru
The world is stuffed full with innovative products, services, technologies, solutions and more
- they must be brought to life through marketing in order to generate revenue and profit
- innovation alone cannot sustain a company
Breakthrough new products require more intense and extensive engagement with customers
example = Sony reader to Amazon Kindle
- Sony reader was an elegant device, more technologically advanced
- however, did not enlist book publishing industry as an ally
- Amazon didn't design an innovative product, they created an original solution
Marketing has been reduced to customer acquisition and retention
what most people consider "marketing" is just advertising
the different marketing channels are just channels that are meant for a specific purpose
Marketing is much more than this
- it's purpose is to find ways to engage customers
- American Marketing Association's definition of marketing:
  - marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large
- Should be less about what happens after an innovation is ready to launch but more about getting it ready to be in the first place—by creating a new marketing or expanding an existing one
- understanding needs to be developed around how something fits into a customers' needs, wants, values, and lives
- building customer experiences that turn products into solutions
Without marketing, we would never know what products or services actually serve our needs best ^[2]
One of the biggest challenges companies face when growing revenue is that "senior leaders have great confidence in their ability to develop innovations but not in their ability to commercialize them" ^[3]
- this limits the return that companies are able to reap from their R&D spending
- companies need to get more adept at selling their innovations to customers
- people who excel at selling new products have traits and behaviors different from those of people who successfully sell existing product lines
- selling new products requires greater intensity and consumes more attention
  - 35% more time required spent meeting with customers
  - more time spent on educating customers on why customers need the product
  - not only does the sales person need to provide the right product information, the customers must feel they have the right information
  - you need to deeply understand your customers
    - what traits suggest that a prospect might be willing to adopt a new way of doing business?
    - what behavioral clues signify that he/she is serious about making a purpose