From your experience, is marketing an art or a science? If it is a mixture of both, which aspect is stronger?

Thanks for the invite.

Marketing for me is an art that can be quantified scientifically and analyzed to give pointers for future marketing exercises. 

It's an art as creativity is the core of any marketing action. It requires a creative bent of mind to match target audience expectations to the right marketing strategy and then see the results as they unravel. When that first consumer chooses your brand instead of a competitor's, because of a print ad/radio ad/TVC/Digital push, it gives the marketer a creative high. 

It also needs the right scientific balance in the mix, before launching any marketing campaign to understand target consumer psychology and demographics, SEC data, SWOT study of the business etc. And later on, post the campaign launch, to analyze the leads generated, leads converted, ROI generated.  

In that way marketing is one of the few occupations in the corporate world which is the right balance of art and science, that can provide immense professional gratification for the right individual. 

Hi, thanx for asking ;)

In my experience, there is strong science side to marketing, from psychology of branding to market research and programmatic media buying.

However, sometimes MR and common sense say one thing, and "gut" says the other. Gut is almost always right (again in my experience). This would lead me to a conclusion that you need to be talented for marketing, you have to have a "feeling" for underlying trends, that "ether" felt by trendsetters and early adopters.

Which would lead to a conclusion that, at the end of the day, marketing is more of an art than science. If it were science, everyone could "learn" it and be good at it. And we know that this is not true ,)

This is a long running debate.  Depending on perspective, and on the functional role within Marketing, the answer varies. Market Research specialists would say definitively ‘Science’.  Creatives or content specialists would likely say ‘Art’. 

Approaching Marketing from a holistic perspective and as a general function – i.e. to take a product to market and effectively sell the concept and product/service advantages – then in my opinion it’s a mixture, falling slightly in favour of Art. 

Excellent Art (creative concepts/powerful visual execution etc) does not succeed on its own, it is most effective when backed up with research and analytics.  Delivery mediums are selected by planners based on numbers and reach.  Psychological insights can and should impact brand positioning. 

Conversely, simply approaching marketing from a numbers background – where the communications have little or no creative or artistic value – yields limited success. 

I would argue that ultimately there are two mentalities within Marketing, one that runs on gut instinct and seeks validation through success or failure, and one that approaches things from a research point of view.  When both are employed – for example developing A/B testing for a campaign – an effective balance can be achieved.

In my opinion the marketing material (ads, DM, etc.) should be mostly influenced by art/talent whereas the positioning should be based on consumer insights and delivery mechanisms should be determined more by science and facts.  

from my experience marketing is a mixture of science and art ;

marketing is a science because the most common  question  is"How much money should i spend on marketing?"the business owner and the accounts want to answer to this questionI ts a good question but the most important is "What return can you expect from your marketing investment"?

that's an important question and measurable like science. 

Marketing is an are besuse the is the  issue of brinding which is difficult to measure.to generate a good return on your marketing investment requires a creative approach.that means that you need to apply  the art of marketing .That is difficult to measure but its necessary.

I believe that  marketing is a science that should draw upon the art .Never let art dictate the direction of your marketing .Use science to determine major decisions and use the art for the nuances

in marketing the science should lead and measure .The art should  inspire and create  .

Of course it's a mixture of both. It's too difficult to find out which aspect overshadows the other one. As a an art it makes use of the creative elements for which explanations cannot be derived. Art is art and we just enjoy it and don't spend any efforts in explaining why a particular thing exists the way it is. When we enjoy a partuclar music, colour or display, sometimes it's just futile to explain as to why we like it. But modern approach to marketing lies in seeing it as a science where we make use of data to findout the cause and why a particular effect arises out of that cause. Based upon the data analysis we choose to do the marketing of a certain product. For example, some colours are used to represent some ideologies. If you keenly observe you can see the patterns. I suggedt as an example for the readers to choose a color say red and findout the similar kind of prodcuts that fall in this category.

Marketing is a mixture of art and science but they both work integrated for an ultimate reason which is the customer satisfaction. The dependability between these two "ingredients" are vital because firstly the art is all about creating the ways in a creative way that will overtake any available competitor in the market to show the company's superiority in understanding their customers. The science part is illustrated with the importance of learning different techniques and strategies that have a major role in applying the marketing from the scratch and taking it to making loyal satisfied customers. Therefore, the marketing art and science work in a 360 degrees cycle that keeps running to cope with the changing customers and market needs. 

I believe marketing is both Science and art, most Importantly  the science should lead and measure and the art should inspire and create 

I believe marketing is a science that Should draw upon the art. Never let the art dictate the direction of your marketing.Use Science to determine major decision and use the art of nuances.

Marketing is both an art and science. It is an art when it comes to creating advertising messages, designing marketing communications or coming up with a creative idea to target your chosen audience. Even pricing is somewhat of an art. However, there are many aspects where science comes in as in strategy implementation, segmentation, media planning, distribution channel selection, budgeting etc. In all activities there is a bit of both though the percentage in terms of emphasis may differ. A marketing effort well conceived and implemented is a balance between both art and science.

Both should have to work together to maintain the balance and to strengthen the aspect of marketing.

I used to think, that marketing is more art, than science.

Recent news about Big data usage and their influence on people' behavior, clearly showed - it is science.

BUT - you should know the art of marketing in order not to spoil all scientific benefits you've got :)