I was creating and organizing folders related to a project my daughter and I are developing when I paused after labeling one of the folders “Marketing”. I paused because the thought entered my mind as I was writing the word on the folder’s tab: Is a folder labeled “marketing” still relevant to business?

When people talk in terms of “push vs pull marketing” what is marketing? When people discuss marketing as “listening versus broadcast marketing” what’s the role of the “people in marketing”? In the age of social media marketing and brands being defined by the crowd does the word marketing accurate capture or describe the process?

Is “marketing” an anachronism?

I think that in the manner marketing has best been defined – basically as a cluster or basket of activities – the word remains useful, as a convenient reference to that basket or bucket of activities. Marketing’s meaning or import – “it’s conceptual capture” – hasn’t entirely leaked out.

But what about marketing’s partner word: marketer. Might the day of “the marketer” be on the wane? Or is it on the rise.

Yes, we’ve coined new phrases such a “social media marketer” which has spawned an entire cottage industry. We’ve extracted “reputation” from “brand” and folks in the marketing industry have gotten busy reshaping their role as “web reputation management” gurus. We’re attempted to create, manipulate and manage “the buzz”, the talk, and given that a marketing name too: buzz marketing. The attempt to control the conversation has now gone so far as Google patenting processes for identifying thought leaders in social networks as a means of enabling companies to influence what the thought leaders think. More, new and “better” efforts to exert control, to “put the broadcast” back into marketing.

Does this make everyone the new marketers?

In the era of the Cluetrain Manifesto and conversation commerce who is “the marketer” now? The guy/gal downstairs in the Marketing Department or the guy/gal who is blogging about your company, posting funny videos on YouTube or submitting a review to a ratings website?