1.1 Why It Matters: What Is Marketing?
Learning Objectives
When you hear the term “marketing,” what comes to mind?
Based on what you know about marketing right now, what one word would you use to describe it? Take a moment to write it down. We’ll come back to it shortly.
Marketing is the strategic process by which organizations build trust, shape perceptions, and influence decisions through personalized experiences, storytelling, and value creation. It combines creativity, data, and technology to engage people meaningfully and ethically, with the goal of changing behaviour, building relationships, and creating mutual benefit for customers, communities, and the organization.
Why should you care about marketing? Marketing is an ever-present force in modern society, and it can work amazingly well to influence what we do and why we do it. Consider these points:
Marketing sells products.
Marketing informs organizations about what people want, and it informs people about products and services available to feed our wants and needs. From overt advertising to covert “recommendations” about things you might like based on other things you’ve purchased, marketing shows us different choices and tries to influence our buying behavior.
As you view its site, Amazon.com gleans information about you and what you’re shopping for. Then it suggests other products that might interest you: items similar to what you viewed, special deals, and items other people bought who were shopping for the same things as you. The genius of this technique is that it’s marketing masquerading as helpful information sharing.
Screenshot of Amazon recommendation engine when an Apple iPhone 12, 64GB is added to Amazon’s Shopping Cart.
Marketing changes how you think about things.
Effective marketing shapes people’s perceptions of the world around them, for better or for worse. Marketing can cause you to think differently about an issue, product, candidate, organization, or idea. When you are attuned to marketing forces and practices, you can exercise better judgment about the information you receive.
The ad below lets you speculate about what the checkboxes might be about before revealing the truth at the very end. They shift expectations and showcase that presumptions about looks are irrelevant when it comes down to the important things in life.
Marketing creates memorable experiences.
Some of the most imaginative marketing is not a message or an image. Instead, it’s an entire experience that gives people a deepened understanding, enjoyment, or loyalty to whomever is providing the experience.
Think about the immersive experience of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. The concerts in each city included more than just music, they featured curated “Eras” zones inspired by her albums, exclusive merchandise areas, interactive wristbands synced to each song, and even fan rituals like bracelet trading and pre-show gatherings. With over 40 songs spanning 10 albums, each performance became a theatrical journey through time, style, and emotion. The stage design, costume changes, lighting effects, and thematic visuals all worked together to build an unforgettable brand experience. This tour is a masterclass in experiential marketing: it deepened fan connection, dominated social media, and created lasting emotional impact, all while boosting ticket, merch, and album sales.
Marketing alters history.
Marketing can alter history. Consider how the Terry Fox Foundation has built one of the most enduring legacies in Canada through values-driven marketing. What began as a personal journey in 1980 evolved into a national movement that continues to inspire generations. Through annual runs, partnerships, and campaigns centered on hope and resilience, the Terry Fox brand has become a powerful example of cause marketing. As of 2023, the Foundation has raised over $850 million for cancer research in Terry’s name (Terry Fox Foundation, 2023).
Marketing can use a variety of elements to shape perceptions and behaviour: words, images, design, experiences, emotions, stories, relationships, humor, sex appeal, etc. And it can use a wide variety of tactics, from advertising and events to social media and search-engine optimization. Often the purpose is to sell products, but as you can see from the examples above, the goal of any specific marketing effort may have little to do with money and much more to do with what you think and do. Go back to that word you jotted down to describe marketing at the top of the page. Now that you’ve had a little more exposure to the concept, what word comes to mind to describe “marketing”? Is it the same word you chose earlier, or are you starting to think differently? By the time you finish this course, you will have a broader understanding of marketing beyond TV commercials and billboards and those annoying pop-up ads on the websites you visit. You’ll learn how to see marketing for what it is. You’ll learn how to be a smart consumer and a smart user of marketing techniques when the need for them arises in your life.
Chapter Updates: New content added. IKEA example replaced with Taylor Swift example. Obama example replaced with Terry Fox example. Images replaced.
Creation note: This content was updated with the assistance of ChatGPT, a language model developed by OpenAI, and was subsequently reviewed and edited by the author for clarity and accuracy.
