What Is Marketing?

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Too often, CEOs and CMOs are not aligned on marketing’s role. Is it because they are speaking in synonyms, both saying “marketing” but meaning different things?

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“Marketing is everything and everything is marketing.”

This is both an objective truth about today’s business landscape, and the title of a 1991 book (and HBR article) by Regis McKenna that, over 30 years later, is remarkably prescient and still wildly relevant.

But if everything really is marketing—what then exactly is “marketing”? At a time when marketing’s commercial relevance generally, and the CMO’s specifically, is being questioned by many a CEO and CFO, is there value in considering what it is they’re questioning, and what they mean when they say “marketing”? Is their definition the same as their CMO’s?

It turns out, probably not.

According to a recent McKinsey survey “CEOs and CMOs aren’t always on the same page about the primary role of marketing in their companies,” with the research finding that only 50% of same-company CEOs and CMOs see the role the same way.

While not news to the CMOs living it, the data begs the question of why it’s this way and raises the specter that CMOs and CEOs—who rarely come from marketing’s ranks—are speaking in synonyms, saying the same thing (“marketing”) but meaning different things. This is a bad thing 100% of the time.

As rudimentary as asking “what is marketing?” may seem, there’s always value in interrogating our default assumptions and definitions to see if they still hold true, or don’t. Especially in times of seismic change, and the past decade+ has been that for marketing and chief marketers both.

So then, what is marketing? And how do marketers define it?

According to the American Marketing Association, whose definition was codified in 2017:

“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.”

Me, I don’t know what this means; the definition complicates (arguably, obfuscates) but doesn’t clarify. If this is how a trade group billing itself as “the essential community for marketers” defines the practice, perhaps it’s no surprise so many CMOs and CEOs aren’t on the same page about it.

Webster’s Dictionary gets a lot closer than the AMA, offering succinctly that marketing is:

“The activity or business of promoting and selling products or services.”

But having died in 1843, Mr. Webster never had to promote or sell anything in today’s commercial landscape. So, again, wondering what might have changed and what endures, I asked a small group of CMOs, from a diversity of categories, how they define marketing.

Perhaps not surprisingly—and certainly reassuringly—there was a lot of consistency, and even if the words used are different, one common perspective emerged among their answers:

Marketing is the practice of creating and capturing customer demand to drive enterprise growth. While that’s my synthesis of what was shared in this non-scientific study, here’s how nine much lauded CMOs define “marketing,” in their words, presented alphabetically (Note: some quotes have been edited lightly for brevity):

• “Marketing is about demand creation and demand capture...(it is) a lot like campaigning. (People) “vote” when they use our services – every day is election day.” ~ Jonathan Adashek, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, IBM
• “(Marketing is about) understanding customers deeply, leveraging that understanding and empathy to build better products to solve their problems, and more resonant campaigns that convert better - to ultimately drive incremental growth and engagement.” ~ Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, CMO, DoorDash
• “Connecting with your target’s needs or desires and convincing them your brand is best aligned with them.” ~ Eugenia Blackstone, CMO, Iris Powered by Generali
• “(Marketing is) a critical component of a company’s growth strategy. Marketing drives revenue growth by deeply understanding customers, building reputation and trust in brands, and delivering customer acquisition, engagement, and retention.” ~ Lara Hood Balazs, EVP, GM and CMO, Intuit
• “(Marketing is about) growth; influencing our target audience to choose our products and services is the core of what we do and spans both art and science.” ~ Soyoung Kang, CMO, EOS Products
• “Marketing is the orchestration of your target’s exposure to, engagement, interaction and experience with your product/brand with the objective of creating a set of thoughts and feelings about your product/brand that will impact purchase decision-making.” ~ Janet Lee, SVP and CMO, Samsung Electronics America
• “(Marketing is) the art and science of deeply understanding your audience and the problem your brand can uniquely solve for them, then connecting with that audience to engage them in your solution in such a way that it drives them to adopt or purchase.” ~ Micky Onurval, SEVP and Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, TIAA
• “Marketing is the art and science of getting people interested in your company and whatever it is selling. Marketing fuels brand desire and drives growth by being the voice of the customer to the company and the voice of the company to the customer.” ~ Dara Treseder, CMO, Autodesk
• “The role of marketing is to create demand, build customer loyalty, and strengthen brand equity.” ~ William White, CMO, Walmart

While the commonality within this small group is as above reassuring, what matters more than any singular definition is that CMOs and their C-suite colleagues align around and share a common definition—whatever it is. Speaking in synonyms, using the same word(s) but meaning different things without realizing it, leaves us sure we’re communicating when we’re not.

Without a shared definition and starting point there is far less likelihood to be any shared success. Because as Lewis Carroll wrote, “if you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

(Let me know in the comments how you see and define “marketing”. Are there important differences of opinion? Nuances and distinctions you think matter broadly?)