Marketing is the connecting of the right people to the right people, the right solution to the right problem. As an artist for 30 years, I am always seeking creativity–how to find it, how to implement it, how to create, what to create, why to create. I’ve found a new reason to do it. And it all encompasses marketing.

Marketing is the tool. The design. The creation. The platform. The study. The canvass. The formula. Every piece of artwork you create is marketing. It may be good marketing. It may be bad marketing. You are telling a story. You are showcasing yourself.

You cannot disconnect yourself from marketing. Marketing is attached to your very being, your soul. Everything about you shines out allowing others to be attracted to you or repelled by you.

I was watching a criminal trial the other day. These lawyers were nothing but marketers. They were trying to convince a jury to buy their product. The best marketer wins the case. One marketer is trying to keep one man from going to jail, the other is trying to put him there. Everything is marketing.

I you want a job or to promote yourself or your product you have to be a good marketer. Some marketing comes easier than others. If you want to sell your abilities, your artwork, your inking style, your lettering samples, your coloring work, you have to market it in the very best way possible.

I cannot thing that marketing is so ingrained in our culture, football players market themselves by the way they play on the field. Every time they make an illegal play, or they argue with the ref, or they do a touchdown dance.

Pharmaceutical companies, investors, grocery stores, toy manufactures. Everything is marketing.

Not everything is marketing, is it? My friends wouldn’t try to sell me anything. What about our wives, our brothers. What about a student, they have nothing to sell. Apparently it is engrained in the fabric of our being.

Hating marketing so much as a child, I was very hesitant to come to these conclusions.

When dating, my wife and I would go out and get all dressed up for a night on the town. My wife would fix her hair, and I would take a shower so I’d smell nice. Marketing. Making ourselves attracted to each other.

The student markets to the teacher by getting good grades or not getting good grades. How you present yourself is marketing. Are you going to market yourself as the good student or the rebel who forgets to turn in the homework.

The teacher markets himself as a good teacher, you should listen to him. Whether the student learns anything or not will decide if the teacher is a good marketer or a bad one. A marketer connects that message to the recipient.

You make your friends based on marketing. Sometimes it is easy. When you have like interests, like hobbies, you laugh at the same jokes, marketing is easy. You pretty much show up. Marketing is hard when you want to get your message to someone who does not want to be your friend.

Your friend is a good marketer when you can trust them with that secret, when you can count on them to have your back, when they will laugh at your jokes, and when they will fight the bullies with you. Your friend is not a good marketer when they’ll tell that secret around to other people. That is just plain, bad marketing.

Marking is connecting the right people to the right people. Marketing is connecting the right solution to the right problem. Marketing is the fundamental influence of all life. We are born with it. We’ll die with it. What we do with it in the meantime is what makes us who we are. Are we going to be good marketers or bad marketers?