The American Marketing Association's official definition of marketing - its conception, evolution, and latest incarnation-is the subject of the cover story of the Sept. 15, 2004 issue of Marketing News.

True to the 'way the hell behind the times' posture of the AMA, the new definition of marketing was officially unveiled at the AMA Summer Educators' Conference in Boston in August with little or no fanfare, and god forbid, someone actually blogging the damn thing. I write this while listening to Scoble & company talk about podcasting, content enclosures, and parametized queries on a 'podcasted' offline version of their recent talk at Gnomedex 4.0 titled "Maximizing Your Blog Strategies" - quite the opposite of the AMA. I highly recommend downloading and listening to it.

The first official definition of marketing was adopted in 1935 by the National Association of Marketing Teachers, a predecessor of the AMA. It was adopted by the AMA in 1948, and again in 1960 when the AMA revisited the definition and decided not to change it. This original definition stood for 50 years, until it was revised in 1985.

The new definition of marketing, as released by the American Marketing Association, is:

"Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders."

Hi Dana, just found your post about the subject that I am writing a current post about. My big question is, if not this, what then? How do you describe what it is you do when you are a generalist "marketer"?