There's a wonderful cartoon in which a guy in a business suit is looking over the shoulder of an artist at his canvas. The caption, spoken by the artist, is, "I used to dabble a bit in accounting, too."

Then there's the guy who said to me, "If you're smart enough to be a lawyer, then you're smart enough to do your own advertising." To which I replied, "Yes that's true. You're also smart enough to be a nuclear physicist, but it doesn't make you one."

There's the guy who read a book about tightrope walking. He knew everything about tightrope walking—except how to do it.

The point is that while marketing may not be nuclear physics, it does have its craft, its artistry, its techniques, its experiences, and its history. And if you're not within the realm of all those things and more, you don't know much about marketing. (Marketing mythology doesn't count for much either.)

And it's not just accountants and lawyers who fall prey to the egocentric nonsense that they can do it because, after all, they have graduate degrees. A large number of people in business feel the same way.

Every marketing professional can tell you a story about a client or employer who retained the marketer for the marketer's expertise, and then drowned him or her with useless second guessing.

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