Eric Norlin's Weblog: Why the Hateration toward marketers?

February 08, 2005

Why the Hateration toward marketers?

Dan Farber has a nice article about how SugarCRM's "anti-marketing" stance is actually a marketing conceit....a couple of comments:

1. he's absolutely right -- go read early Oracle history. How did Larry Ellison compete and market? by attacking his competitors for "not having superior products" and "just spending more on marketing and sales"....tis an old and *effective* technology marketing tactic.

2. I keep noticing this "anti-marketing" stance in weblogs and developer communities lately -- often by those that think they're somehow thinking in the "cluetrain" vein of things. Quite frankly, I don't get it.

a little history: I know 3 of the 4 cluetrain guys. Chris Locke (the - uh - "most creative" of them all) was my boss at one point in time. I have NO formal marketing education, but i do have LOTS of real world marketing experience --- and my early marketing "on the job training" was in the school of cluetrain.

that said, i think i'm pretty good at PR and AR...which is the traditional way of saying that i'm pretty good at starting and maintaining "conversations."

I also think i'm getting good at building scalable process around integrated marketing "campaigns" that generate leads for sales to work on. And let me be clear: this is not a dirty thing.

Why developers think marketing is there to be spat upon like some red-headed step child, i do not know. But *good* marketing (and there's plenty of bad marketing) can change a company's position in the marketplace. Good marketing can feed the sales beast. Good marketing can be funny, down to earth, self-aware and effective all at once.

Marketing is not a four letter word. Fuck is a four letter word. And good marketers aren't afraid to say "fuck" (when appropriate - god knows i do).

Marketers are NOT dumb blondes that spend all day looking at "creative" --- any more than geeks are zit-laden dweebs that spend all of their free time looking at playboy wondering when they'll ever get laid.

Companies *do* choose their culture -- some have a very engineering-centric culture, some have a very sales/marketing-centric culture.....i'm not gonna judge which is better (i don't think i know enough) - -except to say that i think both can be effective at different times in accordance with market dynamics, product set and company stage. Example: Early Ping Identity was ALL marketing (and a little product ;-). Recently, Ping has been mostly engineering (and very little marketing). Now Ping is again going through a stage of sales and marketing (and holding engineering steady). Its a measure-refine, measure-refine, moving target thing. To think you can set one course for you company and just be that way is to be rigid -- and to my mind, ultimately, ineffective.

ok - rant over....i was just getting a little tired of the anti-marketing stereotype. deep breath.

07:45 AM | Permalink

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February 08, 2005

Why the Hateration toward marketers?

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