Marketing Is Leadership
Think about this: The modern-day diamond engagement ring wasn’t valued until a 1938 marketing campaign invented the engagement ring and eventually coined the phrase “diamonds are forever.” Santa’s suit was green until it became red during a 1931 Coca-Cola marketing campaign. Sliced bread was a terrible idea until a 1920s marketing campaign promoted it as a time-saving necessity.
These stories show that marketing is leadership; it‘s about changing mindsets and setting a direction for others to follow. In the design and construction industries, our role as leaders is telling a story about products that will literally shape the face of the Earth for the next hundred years or more. That’s why I fell in love with A/E/C marketing.
I love that, every day, we do something exceptional and permanent—two qualities that marketers of widgets, software, and just about anything else you can think of only dream about.As marketers, we also have a mutual responsibility that goes far beyond the industries we serve. Our collective voice will shape what the future will look like for the built environment, and it’s a future that we need to work together to create. We have a choice: We can promote what has always been, or we can focus on leveraging our positions of leadership to promote projects and project approaches that make a difference.
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This article, written by Tim Klabunde, CPSM, first appeared in the June 2017 issue of Marketer.
