Six degrees of... marketing?

Everyone seems to be talking about word-of-mouth marketing vs. traditional marketing around the blogoclump - here, and here, and here, and here.... and I chimed in somewhere with a comment about how I'm thinking about reevaluating the marketing vehicles I've been using for some of our programs. But something is bothering me about all of this, and it's the same thing that bothers me about any scenario where the "marketing department" butts heads with any other department. My hubby Andy, who's a techy, a program manager for a software company, has described this scenario a million times over the years - the marketing people want "flashy" stuff that the programmers don't think is useful for the product. Obviously the same thing happens in associations, whether it's that "there's too much money being spent on such and such brochure", or "why do we need an E-Newsletter, when the black and white paper version has been good enough for years", etc etc. There's a general antipathy for marketing from anyone except "marketers" and we seem to always be apologizing for being marketers.

But aren't we ALL marketers? Every member, whether evangelist, uninvolved or detractor, is a marketer (positive or negative) through their related action or inaction. Every volunteer is saying , this is somewhere I want to give my time to - and that's marketing. Within an association's staff, everybody has the same goals, to make the association worthwhile for current members and to THEREBY attract new members, which is the goal of marketing.

To not have a line item for marketing doesn't mean we're not doing it - I have no marketing department, nor a marketing budget, but I can safely say I am marketing pretty much 100% of the time. Other bigger associations do have marketing departments, but it's not only the marketing department doing the marketing! See what I'm saying? Marketing really is behind every strategic decision and if all branches of an association really recognized that, we would not be arguing over line items. Maybe there shouldn't be a separate marketing department, but instead a person responsible for thinking about communications and branding in every department - and these people would all get together all the time to figure out how to make sure the message is consistent across the board. To me, WOM marketing is not something "other" than traditional marketing - there are just different communication vehicles. You think there wasn't WOM marketing "back in the day"? If anything, there was lots MORE of it - before computers, and email, and the internet made it so easy. Heck, before the printing press! WOM marketing is older than time itself - it just didn't have a nametag. Not only that, but there's lots of crossover between how we use any number of communication vehicles, they are not all static things. And of course, the most obvious task is to know how to decide which vehicle works best for which audience, and marketers are NOT the only ones who should do that, that's everyone's job... but (trained) marketers are there to help.

Phew! Rant over. And yes, I think I did say "marketing" at least ten times in that paragraph. Gotta be a record!