On Daring Fireball today, John Gruber quoted a 2003 interview with Steve Jobs in which Jobs said:

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

The whole post is great (like most of Gruber’s work), but that quote especially (and much of the middle section) strikes me as how many people have viewed marketing historically. Businesspeople and consumers alike have seen marketing as something that comes after all the “real” work in building a product or service is done. It’s the veneer that makes something look pretty, or the camouflage to hide its shortcomings.

I contend that, for businesses to succeed in this changing world of business, they need to see marketing as more than veneer and view it as essential to product development from the earliest stages.

Marketing (and business) has changed

For years, marketing was just that last step – the polish – that you added on before releasing a product or service into the wild. It was the, “make it pretty,” or “present this in a way that hides that.” It was the, “ok, the product is built, let’s make an ad to get people to buy it.

In the world of mass media, that way of thinking often worked and many large businesses were built on the back of that strategy.

Then, along came the internet, social media and the ability for consumers to talk to each other.

Now, brands can no longer hide behind a fancy ad or slick packaging. They can’t put some fluff in a brochure that means nothing and expect people to fall all over themselves to buy. Marketing has changed from being something that is added to a product to what a product is. Because people talk, how a product or service works is as much (and probably more) of the marketing as any ad ever was.

Unfortunately, perceptions haven’t

The problem comes in that, while consumer expectations have changed and the ability to spread the truth about a product has advanced, many brands’ views of how to market their products hasn’t changed. They still see marketing as something that makes things pretty, rather than one of many lenses that a new product should be viewed through during the development phase.

Gruber also said about Jobs’s view of design:

What Schiller is telling Isaacson is that prior to Jobs’s return to Apple, design was what happened at the end of the engineering process. Post-Jobs, engineering became a component of the design process. This shift made all the difference in the world.

That’s what needs to happen for marketing to be taken seriously and for brands to succeed in this new world of business. We need to look at our products and services through the eyes of the customer. Both in the marketing department and the engineering department, we need to realize that how people interact with a product is as important to the marketers as it is to the developers, and both views need to be considered.

Rather than seeing marketing as an add on, view it as the voice and eyes of the customer within the organization. It’ll make the sales process much easier and may just help avoid some decisions that would have held back your efforts from truly succeeding.

Like Apple, build marketing in

One of the many things that Apple’s obsessive focus on design and experience does is builds the marketing of their products right in as they’re being developed. Whether intentional or not, by building such beautiful, easy to use products, Apple is making something that essentially markets itself.

That should be the function and goal of all marketing.

We should strive to build our products and services in a way that allows for them to market themselves. Essentially, that’s what word of mouth marketing is. Building things so great that people want to talk about them.

This can only happen, though, when marketing is seen as more than just polish or spin, but is taken into consideration throughout the entire development and design process. The copmanies that take that to heart are the ones that will position themselves for success in this ever-changing business world.