Seriously. What. Is. Marketing?

(Instead of burying my lead with the sentence after this one, I decided to throw something snazzy up above, did you like it?  Anyway…)  I was reading an article on the ad agency model being broken and it occurred to me that very few things I learned in college marketing classes actually apply to what I do.  That lead me to think about what marketing actually is.  My handy-dandy Mac dictionary defined it as such:

the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.

I guess that is pretty accurate, but if you look at the wikipedia entry for marketing you start to see where all the confusion comes in:

Marketing is an ongoing process of planning and executing of the marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) of products, services or ideas to create exchange between individuals and organizations.

Marketing tends to be seen as a creative industry, which includes advertising, distribution and selling. It is also concerned with anticipating the customers’ future needs and wants, which are often discovered through market research.

Essentially, marketing is the process of creating or directing an organization to be successful in selling a product or service that people not only desire, but are willing to buy.

Therefore good marketing must be able to create a "proposition" or set of benefits for the end customer that delivers value through products or services.

I probably disagree with the entire third paragraph; there is plenty of unsuccessful marketing out there, and there is also marketing that is not intended to drive a sale for a product or service, at least directly (brand awareness, marketing for non-for-profits, etc.).  So let’s rule that part out.

Is this blog post marketing?  (Probably, although not the greatest form). 

Is sales (as in a person actually selling) marketing?  – I’d probably say no, but then all the people I know who wanted to become salespeople went to school for either marketing or communications. 

As a result of marketing being such a broad term, we end up with all these specialties in marketing like advertising, branding, direct marketing, sales, brand building, etc.  So someone who is good at marketing strategy, might be horrible at sales and someone who is great at online marketing, might know nothing about print and advertising. 

So as I type this post and explore what marketing is (this was really a free form article, no real goal in mind at the start other than to discuss the broad term of marketing) I realize one big thing:
How does this huge category with a million specialties become one major in college?  Why not degrees (or as they called it at Mizzou emphasises) in sales, marketing research, branding, etc?  I’m sure some schools are on board with that, but it now it makes sense that my job as a marketing consultant and specialist has nothing to do with what I learned in college.  Maybe, I should have studied history, english or science, because those are narrow degree paths, unlike marketing.  Err, nevermind, scratch that. 

Cheers.

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