I can remember finally breaking down and buying my first iPod when I was in college.

Everyone I knew already had one. I had been fine with that fact for a while, but then, slowly at first, I was not fine.

A television ad can tell you about a product, it can even make you want it. But an advertisement cannot make you NEED it.

I would see the white ear buds every day around my college campus. It seemed like everyone had them. I had a CD player, which was becoming more and more embarrassing to pull out on the buss or in the library. I needed an iPod. The feeling that owning one was a necessity rather than a desire built inside me until I just could not bare it any longer.

Sure, there were plenty of Apple and iPod commercials on T.V., but seeing the devices every day was what finally put me over the edge. I was slow to catch on that these things were cool but when I did, I felt like the last person on earth without one. And that felt crappy and lonely and lame.

I can remember ordering my new iPod online and getting it in the mail. It felt amazing to finally have one, my own words etched on the back and my music filling its memory. The first day I went to classes with my new iPod I saw the world differently. I stopped noticing the students WITH the white cords trailing into jackets and backpacks. All of the sudden I only noticed the people WITHOUT them. And I was not one of them. I had the white head phones. I was in.

A television ad can tell you about a product, it can even make you want it. But an advertisement cannot make you NEED it. The feeling you get from not having it while everyone around you (that you care about) does have it is what pushes you over the line from want to need.

Apple got it a long time ago. Now, more marketers are figuring out the fact that dumping money into advertising should be a piece of the stagey, not the entire strategy, but it took a long time. Design, timing, allure, service, and so many other factors all make up great marketing and the success of your product.

The surge of the digital revolution has marketers scrambling to figure out how to advertise to more people more efficiently, but the basics have not changed: Create something remarkable that fills a need (real or perceived) and make it available to the right people. Marketing is not just selling the thing once it is made. Marketing is everything from conceiving of the thing to fulfilling orders and handling upset customers. When it comes to your product, marketing is everything. And everything is marketing.