I just saw this post over on 37signals’ blog.
Apparently “The Essential Peter Drucker (part 1)” has a quote:
marketing’s job is to make selling superfluous.
I love this idea.
Business folks always call product development a “cost center”, meaning it costs money to run but doesn’t bring any in. The Sales department is always credited with bringing the money in. What would Sales sell without the product? Clearly Development and Sales have a symbiotic relationship.
But it seems to me that Sales is actually the cost center for Marketing. In a perfect world, Development would make Support unnecessary because the product doesn’t require support. And Marketing would make Sales irrelevant because the product would sell itself.
That would leave us with Development and Marketing being the core functions. Sales and Support are currently just picking up the slack from Development and Marketing not quite building support-free products that sell themselves.
Who’s the cost center now?! 
Development teams can make a product that spreads virally. Who needs marketing?
Ha,
indeed.
Hahaha! I love your spin on this.
It’s both insightful and hilarious.
Note: I would love to leave comments on your articles, but I wish the email field was optional.
Hi Khalid,
Thanks for the note! Hey, I didn’t even realize that “require email address” is something I can turn off through TypePad, so, it’s off now!
Craig.