FHWA has always prided itself on its strong partnerships with state and local highway agencies, industry, academia, and others in the total highway and transportation community. This is where the marketing comes in. For many reasons, this wasn t quite as necessary in the past. We didn t have to persuade folks that the Interstate Highway System was a good idea, and we didn t have the same fierce competition for attention and resources. They apparently equate marketing to selling and selling to advertising and advertising to lying or, at least, to stretching the truth.
Persuasion is one of the three major purposes of communication.
If one is producing a worthwhile product or providing a worthwhile service and he believes in the value and utility of his work, he should be eager to share information about it with others who may be able to use this product or service. And that, in a nutshell, is marketing. As marketing expert Philip Kotler contends in his best-selling marketing textbook, The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. We just need to be marketing-sensitive to include marketing as an element of every appropriate project and program.