Marketing Post - The Bug Report
avc.com
avc.com
He is softening his position it seems, but he is still seeing marketing as something other than it is.
Marketing is the act of identifying a market's demand, and optimizing your offering to capitalize on that demand. It is what drives revenues in business more than anything else.
The problem is that advertising agencies and other firms that offer other promotional or consulting services have co-opted the term 'marketing' for themselves.
Promotion is a tactic that can strengthen your marketing efforts. Fred's point seems to be that paying for promotion is unwise for a startup. I generally agree.
He might also be saying that paying a costly consultancy firm to advise on your offering's market fit as a startup is unwise. I would agree with this also.
It looks like Fred has seen the term 'Marketing' on the wrong side of the balance sheet one too many times.
He is downplaying the importance of marketing for startups. I think that this is very damaging to the young entrepreneurs that are listening without understanding the context.