This article is a translation. You can see the original article here.
Recently, someone asked if I could tell who invented marketing.
Wow, that’s how asking who made up the wheel. Just look how Nobunaga created a «branding identity» during the battle of Nagashino. At first, nobody wanted gunpowder weapons, and after that, everyone wanted them. Such guns were not so reliable as a bow and arrow, despite the tactical value of armor piercing and psychological effect of the noise and confusion. Nobunaga decided to exploit this as an advantage.
And Boudica was an expert in partners catchment. Basically marauders that razed Londinium… but investment associates, anyway.
And romans? they really did know how to spread their own brand, setting up colonies and trading settlements. With each one of the amphitheaters and trading posts, they expanded the «Romae» brand. And come on, everybody to use their coin and establish alliances! (and if not, you know: crucifixion :3 )
I’ve investigated a bit -just a bit-, and even if I can’t give an exact date or pointing out a «Creatio Ex» or undoubted genesis of marketing, what it’s true is we can find certain distinguishable origins from -and during- the 18th century. In this point, a series of patterns -highly different of the previous concepts of «guild’s own image» or precarious politics concerning «customer care» and quality- appears.
According to an old book of industrial jurisprudence during the beginning of contemporary age, which I read a few years ago at university (yeah, an engineer studying law, you can celebrate it), political liberalism and social release of classes, happened as a result of the French Revolution, had to push or implies -and in fact, it did- a consequent economic liberalism.
Mercantilism and old and rigid practices from the hand of guilds was extinct. Jobs and trading are liberalized, awaking the industry, and making sectors more competitive. And investments will be no more in hands of very limited pressure groups, who choke off markets controlling the entry, at the same time that they control the intern learning with an apprentices system.
The guild is dead. Long live the legal entity.
Actually, if we go back to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, and gather more about the historical backgrounds, matched according to the very same ones of the French Revolution, we could find a little anachronism… It was the breaking of the previous economic system what foments a necessary sociopolitical system, instead. But correlation between cause and effect is out of place here.
Whatever the case may be, 18th century would bring great changes.
Although probably we could even go back to an older track or antecedent, the biography of Josiah Wedgwood offers many of the essential aspects of modern marketing. Here is where we have a first and notorious brand recognition: a completely intentional effort at spending resources in search of a concrete «company image». A defined standard quality level, which generates recognition (a primitive quality control appears). As well as a continuous search for bigger and better image in front of consumers.
Truth be told, Wedgwood’s strategies is a delicious reading, if we find a good and complete biography. And the funny thing is that many marketing «experts» could learn something of him.
For example, Mr Josiah sent samples to potential customers, and many of them became loyal to the Wedgwood brand. But there’s no company enough enlightened in order to register engineers, important or not, introduce themselves, and give catalogues of what the manufacture. Not a single (correction: veeery few -once I met a company 4 years ago-)
People who, by definition, wake up and go to bed thinking in machines and how to solve problems, and who make a potential focus of consumption and invention. No lawyer is going to patent a light bistable or a laser opacimeter. Engineers do, and it requires high-tech components. They would have to send me bearings catalogues, valves, Zhengzhou Software’s boards and de Texas Instrument datasheets at least! (‾ ^ ‾)
I, myself, received from Vistaprint a sample of cards and flyers which I apply for. As a result, I got total knowledge of what I receive and trust. Few days later I call for a shipping. And are the manufacturers waiting to obtain total image recognition and advantage for nothing, being, as they are, thousands of them??? The result is that last time I needed a valve, I made it myself with junk. I am not going to buy a shit.
It is clear that marketing does not exist already. They’re the fathers :p
The Inventor of Marketing. by Eloy Ruiz Montañez is licensed under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional License.
Creado a partir de la obra en https://ingenieroeloynomano.wordpress.com/2017/12/31/pensamientos-enlatados-4-el-inventor-del-marketing/.
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