What is good marketing?
“There are only two things in a business that make money — innovation and marketing, everything else is cost.” — Peter F. Drucker
I passed my marketing class at university by attending just one lecture.
True story.
Our professor challenged us with a bold offer: give an example of a wildly successful marketing campaign on the topic “What is good marketing?”, and if you nailed it, you’d get an automatic pass. No more classes, and you’d ace the exam with the highest grade.
But there was a catch.
The campaign had to be for a completely useless product. And it couldn’t be a scam.
The room filled with nervous giggles, but no one spoke up.
I was studying finance and business—marketing was just another required course. I hadn’t set out to become a marketer, but by pure coincidence, I had the perfect example in mind.
I whispered it to a friend, unsure if it was good enough. He nudged me to raise my hand, so I did.
The professor called me to the front of the class.
My example? The "Pet Rock" (Google it if you haven’t heard of it).
It was literally a rock, marketed as a low-maintenance pet. You read that right—just simple rocks, sold in custom cardboard boxes.
It was marketed as the perfect pet: no need to feed, walk, bathe, or groom it. It wouldn’t die, get sick, or disobey.
One million units sold at $4 each.
The class erupted in laughter.
The professor smiled and said, “Fads like this come and go, but this counts.” And with that, I got my pass and didn’t have to attend another lecture.
This wasn’t the start of my marketing career. Honestly, I was just happy to skip the rest of the classes.
But the lesson stuck with me: some of the best marketing successes come from useless, even ‘failed,’ products.
Yet, we judge marketers by the big logos on their résumés.
This was my experience as well in the startup world. I had the opportunity to work with folks from the biggest brands in technology and SaaS (Google, Atlassian and more). More often than not I found myself un-impressed. They weren’t bad marketers, but it was clear they had more experience navigating company politics than shipping creative experiments.