@dwayne
There's a fundamental misconception about marketing here which many marketers also have:
The function of marketing is not just to bring in new people but also retaining them.
Perhaps a more holistic and clarifying frame is brand-product-comms. Merkle's mistake was putting all their resources on engineering. But you just always need to be creating an aura-vortex around your brand/product.
Underplaying comms in THIS media environment? Insane