Making it right and selling it well

Marketing and Design as adjacent fields present great opportunities for synergy at their interface. However, in many practice and academic situations the relationship is more of a disconnection rather than an exchange. This paper explores the philosophies, attitudes and outlooks that characterise Marketing and Design. It examines Design thinking as a compensatory meta-discourse which has emerged to fill this gap. It also considers Buchanan's (1998) concept of four orders of Design and extends them further into four orders of Marketing. Going further, it suggests that Marketing would do better to align itself with the five discourses of Designerly thinking identified by Johansson-Sköldberg et al. (2013). It emerges that Design thinking while a useful and stimulating approach in pedagogical contexts has no firm roots in Design practice. Finally, it concludes that it would be useful for Designers to extend their thought and practice with Marketing concepts.