I hear the words viral and marketing tossed around a lot in my line of work, and I often wonder how well people understand what it really takes for something to be viral or what it all means. Let’s define the two words separately.

Definiton of Marketing via Wikipedia

In his book, The Practice of Management, Peter Drucker wrote that “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

If marketing is the distinguishing function of the business, then what is marketing and how is it achieved?

1. “…an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.” (sounds like the definition of public relations)

2. Human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes”.Philip Kotler

3. “…the ongoing process of moving people closer to making a decision to purchase, use, follow, refer, upload, download, obey, reject, conform, become complacent to someone else’s products, services or values. Simply, if it doesn’t facilitate a “sale” then it’s not marketing.”

4. “…the management process of anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer requirements profitably” Chartered Institute of Marketing

5. “…war between competitors.” Al Ries and Jack Trout

Hmmm…. Agree or disagree?

Coming soon . . . the definition of viral. After we define both, we’ll put them together and see what we get.