2021-10-30 at

Marketing Organisations : Taxonomy

*Marketing* - broadly refers to all the activities regarding supply and demand, in a value-chain. Customers are on one hand, and the supply-chain is on the other. In some stakeholder management formations, I might label this as the *quality* team, which protects the *customer's* interests.

Marketing ➡️ *Product* teams - tend to mean the strategy, R&D, and ops, for the stuff that customers pay for officially on receipts. This includes all the ... *things* they take home (breakfasts), *spaces* they can experience (park tickets), and *services* they receive (tuition, massages, etc.).

*Marketing ➡️ Services* teams - tend to mean the strategy, R&D, and ops, done to *enhance or enable* the first team, but customers don't get billed for this in receipts. The biggest example is *marketing communications* / marcom. Under marcom, structurally *brand management* comes first ... which is designing the *personality* , and *promise* of the business ... most other activities serve the brand! Example : in a brick'n'mortar business, the *e-commerce* storefront operations is a service, and it is not exactly marcom, but beside marcom. Yet in an e-commerce business, this might be reclassified from "service" to "product", as here the online storefront would be front and centre.

With juvenile companies,  the nominal "marketing department" only does marcom, and some other marketing services. And the nominal "ops team" is actually the marketed product team.

This is important to note because a junior marcom staff may think they do "marketing" but actually they do only services, and sometimes only the marcom part.

When someone says they need coaching or hires in "marketing", we can drill down to ask, "product or services (as defined above)?", and "if under services, is it just marcom?", and "if under marcom, which channel, or segment, or horizontal?"