Have you ever been in a conversation with other marketers and you get the sense that even though you are talking about marketing, sometimes you aren't on the same page about how marketing should work, be implemented or the direction it's headed?


I've been mulling this over after reading the reviews of my blog on Scribnia (a rating and discovery engine for bloggers and columnists). I received great ratings (many thanks!) but the common theme of the reviews was that some people didn't agree with my opinions/observations on marketing, PR and social media. My first gut reaction was "How can that be? I blog about basic, text book marketing and PR."
I started thinking about the reasons why marketers can be talking about the same topic and yet have totally different responses or reactions to the conversation at hand and I've come to this conclusion: all marketers are not created equal. What do I mean by that? Glad you asked.
The University/College Experience
I don't know about you, but as marketing major, I had a lot of different professors through the years, most with their own agendas, and if it was a "publish or perish" school we usually used their book(s), articles, or worked towards research that met their agendas.* And my professors' never seemed to approach marketing the same way. I am sure that I am not the only marketer that had that experience. Not to mention that as marketing students we each had a different ability to take in and process what we were learning.
The Work Experience
Remember back to your first or second marketing job. Perhaps you tried to remember everything you learned from your university/college days, but that research project on marketing Tastykake in Slovakia just didn't seem quite relevant to the 'real world' (*that was one of my projects for my professor's client...see what I mean by agenda?!). Or maybe you didn't major in marketing or go to university/college at all and your first marketing job was your first exposure to marketing. But none of that mattered anyway because there was a new set of people to get acquainted with and to learn from –and they had their own set of agendas for you to learn.
The Experienced Marketer Experience
After about 5-10 years of getting your hands dirty with the tactical and strategic sides of marketing you have it all down. Perhaps you've worked with small unknown clients/companies and/or large well-known clients/companies. You know what marketing is, you know what works or doesn't. You have developed a marketing gut. Maybe you're an expert in one area or maybe you're a Jack or Jane of all marketing trades–but one thing is for sure, you know marketing and now you have your own agenda.
Now multiply these three experiences by all the marketers out there. It's amazing there's any agreement at all on marketing best practices. And that's only three experiences...I am sure there are many more.
I don't know about other marketers, but for me marketing is a science first (research, analytics, etc.), then an art (communications, advertising, design, etc.). I think it's the "art" part where our experiences tend to make us who we are as marketers. Never before have we had such a public collision of so many marketers, with so many experiences, as we do today. Marketers have multiple platforms (blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) to share their experiences and their agendas.
Thankfully all marketers are not created equal or we'd be seeing the same marketing regurgitated over and over. Maybe it's all of these experiences that create great marketers and marketing...or not. What do you think?