I’ve been worried about the issue for some time now. Every time someone who is not in the industry asks me what I work on and commented that in marketing, a look of distrust appears on the horizon. If in addition, I qualify my specialization, agri-food marketing, then the reticence is greater, thinking that I spend my working days trying to deceive consumers and sell “smoke” or poor quality products of my clients, those big unscrupulous entrepreneurs of the agri-food sector.

I manage to curl the curl if I also mention that I have a degree in Psychology. Then they think that next to the degree, when finishing the degree, they gave me a crystal ball and I am able to read the minds of the people.

Other times, outside the professional environment, in conversations, the negative connotation of the term appears again: when a low quality film achieves a blockbuster, it is commented in my presence: “That has been thanks to what David is dedicated, to marketing. ” Same with a musical group that triumphs being mediocre, like the very Chikilicuatre (or as it is written) that the other day a friend mentioned pointing at me in the conversation: he had his success, as David knows, for marketing.

And, even the marketing professionals themselves (academic definitions aside) we can clearly explain what marketing is. Every day I meet graphic design companies that say they are marketing, web design companies with the same message, companies that make hats and advertising keychains and sell them as marketing and thus an infinite “totum revolutum” … and of course , then one crosses with clients who ask him to do some “pamphlets” for your company and that you decide to do that marketing or advertising.

Special mention deserves the entrepreneurs of the old school, for whom marketing is publicity in the common press (the marketing strategy 2.0 is science fiction) and a waste of colors and photographs, as a man who was a colleague in some papers on marketing of food products in which I was lucky enough to participate and that had the audacity to recommend to the public not to invest even one euro in marketing, based on the experience of an acquaintance of yours who invested 100 million pesetas in marketing, buying trailers and ” labeling them and everything “to subsequently fail in their investment. Here is a new definition of marketing: Buy trucks and label them.

I am the first to sing the “mea culpa” and I intend to make an effort to clarify the terms and dignify the profession, which is why, among other things, I have invested part of my time in writing this article. I am aware that I will not get much, so I ask for the collaboration of all my colleagues. A short time ago, I was driving to the office on a motorcycle and stopped behind a bus in Valencia; When I went on a motorcycle, I did not have time to take a photograph and show the content literally, but the announcement of a famous shopping center read something like this: “We invite you to the cinema for free. Without lies. Without marketing. ”

I hope that the “marketing professionals” who came up with that campaign read this article and join my cause. In advance, I show you my gratitude.