General Electric in the 50s saw the marketing function as precursor to today’s array of experience design methodologies.

On marketing’s role in business process, General Electric stated in its 1952 annual report:

[The marketing concept] introduces the marketing person at the beginningrather than at the end of the production cycle and integrates marketing into each phase of the business.

Thus, marketing, through its studies and research will establish for the engineer, the design and manufacturing person, what the customer wants in a given product, what price he or she is willing to pay, and where and when it will be wanted.

Marketing will have authority in product planning, production scheduling, and inventory control, as well as sales, distribution, and servicing of the product. (1952, 21)

What typically exists in most organisations is not marketing in the sense described above.

Rather, promotion and advertising typically gets labeled as ‘marketing’ and hence the need for new departments under the umbrella of ‘experience design’ such as user centered design and interaction design.

Experience Design bridges the gap between the 2 basic functions of a business as so poignantly described by Peter Drucker:

“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

Hence, from different perspectives:

• Strategic marketing places experience design for innovation at the heart of the business
• Experience Design places marketing at the heart of the business.

Stop me before I ramble..