Marketing - Overview

Where business and creativity come together

As a society, our attitudes about advertising change over time. Because the professional marketer is always trying to attract attention to a product, he or she must have strong creative skills in order to help their product stand out from the rest.

Without creativity, marketing isn't nearly as effective. Consider this: when watching TV, how many viewers tend to 'tune out' during a commercial? Alternatively, people actually enjoy watching commercials during important sporting events (and even talk about them the next day). What's the difference between these two sets of commercials? Creativity.

Another example of creativity in marketing is keeping up with the trends of consumer behavior. One current consumer trend is the desire to find out authentic information -- including the opinions of complete strangers -- about a product. This creates a challenge for marketers: no longer can they just talk about the product on their company web site, they need to get the general public to talk about it on their personal web sites, blogs, Facebook pages, and so on. What’s more, they want those people to say good things about the product. Marketers must 'think outside the box' to discover how they can make that happen.

It all comes back to Business.

Business skills are the foundation on which a marketing career is based. A strong background in business helps the professional marketer understand a company’s motivations and work within budget and time constraints. Understanding business dynamics is especially helpful when marketing a product to other businesses, rather than directly to the public.