[stfu]

Weissman needs to differentiate more. He seems to be mixing up marketing, advertising and sales. I would argue that "people sitting around in a boardroom and telling narratives about What People Want, and so forth)" are still core to successful advertising.

At the core of advertising is the "idea" - almost similar to a startup. Neither number crunching nor some psychological tricks are able to replace this. In fact their purpose is in my opinion just to evaluate or optimize towards better follow up investments.

Now this might be a different story when talking about (direct)sales where you can try to quantify action-reactions related to a specific product. And for most businesses the role of marketing ("all processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging value") is far more complex than just Tweets, Facebook and Foursquare.

[aweissman]

I mixed those concepts up purposely in order to make the larger point which is that we may be on the cusp of native monetization schemes - ones that are consistent with how users use web services

[jonnathanson]

"...we may be on the cusp of native monetization schemes - ones that are consistent with how users use web services..."

Perhaps, but that doesn't negate the strategic fundamentals of either marketing, advertising, or sales. The emergence of breakthrough tactics -- even disruptive tactics -- does not necessarily upend strategy. In some cases, it simply allows the marketer (or advertiser) to pursue his/her strategy more effectively.

"The product sells itself" is, to some extent, a misperception. Even in the coming state of things. No product ever truly sells itself -- even if it is found in search, or recommended by a friend, or stumbled upon. The art and science of building, distributing, pricing, and positioning that product -- so that is is recommended by the right people to the right people, stumbled upon under the right circumstances, or searched for in the right context -- still draws upon all the knowledge built up in the marketing field to date.