A couple of months ago I had a very interesting meeting with a VC backed social gaming company.  Honest to goodness, I was told from this highly educated CEO of a social gaming company,  (don’t even ask, I’m not revealing the name),  ”We don’t need marketing.  Read Jeff Jarvis’ book, “What Would Google Do?”

SO, off I went, bought the book and read.  I do recommend the book.  It’s a lot about the “network effect”, social networking and marketing, although none of those words are used in the description of the book.  And it does in fact paint a simple picture, supported with examples (obviously the largest being Google), that marketing is not needed these days.  And, as this VC guy had done, had bought into the ideation of “If you build it, they will come.”

Well, as a marketer, I beg to differ.  And it’s not just about defending my talent or even my career.  Really.

But it can be very dangerous to think that anyone can have success in not doing “some” sort of marketing.  Unless of course you are first or the best. (more on that later).

Take social gaming for instance.  When games first appeared on Facebook, very few were actually marketed in the traditional sense.  However, the expansion of those games (take Who’s Got the Biggest Brain (from Playfish, who was purchased for $600M to traditional video game company Electronic Arts) for example took advantage of the network effect, viral loops, social media and lots and lots of publicity.  The marketing was built “in the product” from the beginning from its inception.  And now that there are more competitors in the social gaming space we do see games advertised on FB.  Social City certainly just made an effort to get out of the clutter with their new ads clearly targeted to other social gaming customers.

My point is this, at the beginning of any new business growing sector there are success stories of those that launched companies or products without marketing.   But as competitor’s step in, it’s time to add in your marketing engine.

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