Marketing and engineering are two completely different worlds. Engineers sometimes despise marketing people because they think the other side does not produce anything valuable. Marketing people sometimes despise engineers because they think the other side does not care about the real valuable things: money, good looks or agreeable appearance. Yet both worlds can complement each other well. People in engineering know how to produce something, but often they do not how to sell it. People in marketing know how to sell something, but they do not know how to produce it.

Marketing is social, it is about convincing people. Nelson Mandela said: “Don’t talk to their minds; talk to their hearts.” You convince people by arousing their interests and emotions. You need psychological knowledge to persuade and convince people. Often you need to distort the facts and the truth to convince people to buy something.

Engineering is not very social, it is technical. It is about convincing machines to do the right thing. Machines and people are different, you control machines by giving them exactly the right instructions and commands. You need technological knowledge to do this. You need to stick to the facts and the truth if you want to find out what happens in a machine.

In Marketing …

  • markets rule the world
  • appearance matters, beautiful people are common
  • arousing emotions is important
  • psychological knowledge is required
  • persuasion and manipulation of people is necessary
  • everything is based on untruth, illusions, distortion of facts
  • names (and “brands”) are invented, but now new things

In Engineering …

  • machines rules the world
  • appearance does not matter, nerds and geeks are common
  • suppressing emotions and precise execution of instructions is important
  • technical knowledge is required
  • construction and instruction of machines is necessary
  • everything is based on correctness, truth, honesty
  • things are invented, but not new names

general, principles

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2011/09/09

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