Is Marketing...
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- eegrek0
I work in-house and my creative team is part of the Marketing when really we should be Creative Services. I consider creative services to be storytellers and marketing to be the story generators. We take what they are trying to say, and sing it. It doesn't always work out that way (ideas can come from anywhere, and should) but that's the relationship I have with 'marketers'.
- doesnotexist0
whatever marketing is, i feel it's most at odds with design when it's a separate department.
it's best when creative director's are working closely with clients to market the brand, sometimes by creating great stories with imagery & copy.
- d_rek0
I think the problem as it applies to my job, is that our 'marketing dept.' is really creative services - they simply pump out layouts for our parent company's many different subsidiaries. I haven't once seen them engage in any sort of storytelling or message generation in regards to specific users and audiences. In that sense... they're just a bunch of production monkeys. To call it marketing is a bit of a sham.
- we used to be like that, but it's slowly turning the corner into marketing & design. feel your paineegrek
- randommail0
Good design is clarity in communication.
Good marketing is effectiveness in persuasion.
- cannonball19780
Marketing is the management of a product's position in a market.
Your creative scruples figure into that on a smaller scale. But you get paid the big bucks to do it well.
- maikel0
Marketing and design have very little in common (unlike most people would think) but as the 2 disciplines normally work alongside, the lines get blurry. To make it worse, many directors think that 'the creative people' is all the same. I think the confusion is what makes people itchy, and one group of professionals believing in their hierarchical superiority over the other.
- booya0
Marketing and Design compliment each other nicely. I should know I do it day in, day out. Not only are you thinking from an audience psychology and delivery method but your also tying it into the design. The campaigns I run as a Marketing Manager and head of Creative are considered to be some of the most effective and consistent because I think from both fronts. People in Marketing with some solid technical creative skills are hard to find.
- ali0
Without design marketing is nothing
- bullshit!
sadly I think it is the other way roundmaikel - I tend to agree with maikelNegativeSpace
- bullshit!
- vaxorcist0
OK.... a slightly different view.....a random rant....
I've worked in shops that called themselves "advertising agencies" and other places that called themselves "marketing communications" ....
supposedly, advertising agencies whole aim is to enhance the brand's image, so that you do NOT have to do as much "marketing promotion" and/or as many discounts, etc.... An account planner at this agency once said something like "advertising is like building up your brand by going to the gym, marketing promotion is like your brand taking heroin, it feels great, is addictive, and will eventually kill your brand if done too much"..
.... i.e. if you do great brand advertising, you're like Apple, if you are constantly doing sales and discounts, you're like e-Machines.... there's no love lost between advertising agencies and "marketing promotion" agencies....
BUT, the Marketing Promotion agency people thought "brand advertising" was a total waste of money, where you had NO IDEA if it's working or not.... they had what they thought were solid numbers, and from an ROI standpoint, they usually had a great story...
The general feeling there was that brand advertising was often the refuge of art school weirdos (like me) who just somehow managed to convince clients to pay for their art school fun....
BUT I did learn a HELL of a lot from the marketing promotion agency when it came to A/B testing and such... we'd do various versions of something, test them, learn what got a response and what didn't.... it's a new way of thinking about your design process and I do think more people should do this.... it does NOT always lead to ugly shit making money,as I was fearing.....lots of "make everything bold" moments from hell didn't happen....
Ironically, the client side people were "in the marketing dept" even if they hired a "brand advertising" agency, or a "marketing promotion" agency... and I think many of them had to report faster results than a brand advertising approach would allow...
That said, the idea that "brand" is everything about the company that the customer comes in contact with is a good metric.. and if it's all designed well, all experienced well, including the hold music on the phone, the fine print on the business card, etc... that's a good thing.... and should be an "experienced design" not just "anything"
I do think that target market should be a huge determination of which approach you take....
are you the BMW of your industry? The Hyundai?
I've seen BMW ads in the newspaper offering Leasing Discounts...
And... the Kia and Hyundai brands are looking WAAY better these days, are they always offering discounts? Not anymore! Is their Design improving? Yes...Are they doing Brand Advertising??? Yes....
does their brand advertising look like crazy art school shit? yes! hmmmm....
- vaxorcist0
But I've driven a Kia Soul and I'd still really, really rather have a BMW, even a 20 year old BMW.... so the actual product design matters.... the Kia Soul's visibility outwards was weird... the window sills were up too high, the blindspot in the back was huge.. otherwise not too bad for the price...
- attentionspan0
- seen it before, it is funny, and I have to agree in a way....vaxorcist
- duhsign0
design can exist without marketing but marketing wouldn't exist without design...except for radio haha
- Ranger0
Marketing certainly isn't design, it's like saying advertising is design or branding is design.
I find myself thinking about it a lot as I work in a place that claims to be a creative marketing agency. It's so small though that there is complete cross over, everyone has opinions on each others areas but invariably the designers are looked on to suggest areas and solutions to clients. If the marketing had their way we would be doing the same solution for each of our clients so to that end I think it is vital to all that there is cross over and a struggle between the 2 disciplines.
I wouldn't want to be in a situation where there were walls up around everyone's departments and the designers just receive a technical brief for the day rather than being able to influence the why's before the how's.
- That cross-over is a GREAT THING as long as personalities work well together.... better than the SILO mindsetvaxorcist
- nb0
Marketing is not design. Design is not marketing.
Design is an attempt to make the best hammer.
Marketing is an attempt to convince others that you're selling the best hammer, regardless of its quality.
- doesnotexist0
without marketing design is esoteric
- NegativeSpace0
Interesting how everyone has a different take on this.
I work in house for an engineering corporation. The way its setup here: designers are within the Communications department, which is under the Marketing umbrella, we both work closely together, but we essentially have our own office space separate from them. The executives on the marketing team are responsible for bringing products to market. It has little to do with the specifics of graphics or design. Each of our major markets that we focus in, is managed by leader and its their job to identify which direction our products need to go (new products, improvements, phasing out existing products), etc. They essentially drive the direction of the company. Based on that they have to decide what the most important messages (what is most interesting to our customer's needs) are and with our help, devise strategies to launch and sell products. Its our teams job to massage all of that info a more palatable and organized format (and support them through writing/photography/design/video... we decide).
From my perspective, what the people here in marketing do, is far from simply trying to convince customers to buy our products; less to do with persuasion, and more to do with whats right for our business.