Marketing is not advertising and selling

This post was inspired by Techcrunch reporting VC Fred Wilson's odd thoughts about marketing: "Marketing is for companies who have sucky products. -- And you won't have to do much marketing, at least at the start."

This sounds like the usual nonsense people think about marketing. The nonsense that it's all about advertising and selling. That it's all about hiring a marketing company to create a campaign. Advertising and selling are marketing, but marketing is not advertising and selling. Not solely. Marketing is something much much more:

"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."
American Marketing Association. Definition of marketing. Retrieved Feb 28 2011.

"The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably."
Chartered Institute of Marketing. Definition of marketing. Retrieved Feb 28 2011.

"Today marketing must be understood -- in the new sense of satisfying customer needs."
Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong, Veronica Wong & John Saunders 2008. Principles of marketing. Page 6. Pearson Education Limited. Retrieved Feb 28 2011.

Advertising and selling are parts of marketing. The core idea of marketing is some sort of a sale. However, marketing is the whole process of creating the product, doing marketing research, packaging and pricing the product, talking with people about the product and giving support and everything else.

Marketing is creating and bringing the product to markets. Without marketing you don't even have a product. Sucky or otherwise.

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