Aquent's Matt Grant emailed me the other day to request an interview to chat about my marketing career. I had to set him straight right away. I said yes to the interview, but added, "Just so you know, I'm not a marketer -- I'm an editor of a marketing publication. I've absorbed a lot through osmosis, but I just want to be clear that my strength and background is in editorial work, not marketing."


Then we talked the other day. Matt, who has a PhD. in philosophy, had an interesting take on the editor's role.

"If marketing in its purest sense is 'the act of bringing a product to market,'" Matt later wrote on his blog, "then weren't editors, who cultivate a specific brand of content, manage the people who produce it, and present it to the appropriate content consumers, 'marketers'?"

My responsibilities here at MarketingProfs involve a lot of "marketing matchmaking" between writers and audiences, among others (making me something of an editorial Yente). And because I see our content as our main "product," Matt says that I'm effectively MP's brand or category manager.
"In other words," he says, "maybe she was a marketer after all."
He wonders: "–how many people out there are marketers without even realizing it?"
As Seth Godin writes, "The other, more likely lesson is that marketing is way too important to be left to professionals. Every person is a marketer, and anyone crazy enough and passionate enough to start something is definitely a marketer."
Seth's writing about entrepreneurs. (Adding their two pesos were Sharon Sarmiento and Ann Michael, among others.) But I'd argue that anyone in the business of creating... well, anything has an entrepreneurial gene.
What do you think?
Check out Matt's full write=up on his blog.