> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://mrussell.co.uk/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Marketing. How?
- URL: https://mrussell.co.uk/marketing-how/
- Published: 2026-10-09T16:33:41.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-09T16:33:41.000Z
- Author: Mark Russell

You know that feeling when you thought you knew how something worked and then you reach a ripe old age and you realise you never actually had a clue? This is how I feel about marketing.

Many years ago, when I was a jobbing designer, I used to worry that people would call me out for 'working in marketing' and back then I thought I *did* work in marketing. I was communicating. I was enabling people to buy stuff, or for brands to sell stuff, or for users to achieve stuff, or I was letting people know advertising messages. That's marketing, isn't it?

The fact dawned on me recently that this was either merely a very specialised branch of marketing, or possibly not really marketing at all. Maybe it's more *visual* marketing, or perhaps just plain old *comms*.

And now I have a problem because I need to be a marketer. I've been whirling round in my little product bubble for too many years, taking for granted the fact that there's a bloody great gaping hole in my knowledge.

It would be alright if I just needed to fake being a marketer. I could probably manage that. I need to actually be one, because without being one, none of the projects I'm fiddling with will ever see the light of day. Like everything else I've created, which, thinking about it is quite a few things over the years, they'll either sit in a drawer with all the others or require somebody else to do the marketing.

Here are the main things I didn't realise about marketing. Or, perhaps more accurately what my current, fuzzy definition of marketing is now that I'm attempting to get a proper grip on it:

1. It's 100% about people. Ads and copy and designs and stunts and showmanship are the byproduct. By people, I don't just mean customers. Although they're pretty important. It's about understanding people and it's also about the marketer understanding themself and how they communicate with people. In other words, it's a spooky potion of cultural, personal, and self-awareness.
2. More than people, it's about relationships, and those are multiple as well. There's the relationship between the customer and the product. That's pretty obvious, right? Yeah, I reckon that was what I used to think was all of it. But there's also the relationship between the marketer and the customer, and that one's more tricky. Sometimes the relationship is mediated through the product, through an ad, or through some kind of comms, but more often than not, it's direct and personal. And this seems especially true if you're beginning something or starting from scratch.
3. And it's also blindingly obvious that it's about publicity, or perhaps a better word for it is *exposure*. I've thought that all along, but I'd only really considered the outcome (the website, the lauch, the ad) not the human, emotional input. This exposure might be massively public or subtly intimate. A lot of it's about behaviour in a meeting or a call as much as showing up on stage for a keynote.
4. Then there's the effort angle, which is my current conundrum. I haven't even been able to start properly on this yet. I knew it's about identifying people and finding people, but it's also about getting people to talk to you and then actually going through the act of talking. The idea of that is more exhausting than of pushing pixels or committing code. For that you rely solely on your own feedback and your own challenges, and that of your team. There's not this big wobbly, nebulous, risky *other* involved. Okay, there's probably a client or a boss, but they're known quantities. The other I'm talking about here might have been completely misunderstood by you, or have their own ideas, or just not give a shit.

I know I've had several thousand real marketing meetings, organised by others, all without really realising what they were, or understanding their substance. That's a good thing because when I know they're coming they petrify me.

So, people who know more than me: What's your definition? How *does* it work? How can I come to terms with it? And how do I learn more?