That’s fair, and I think we’re probably closer in opinion than it first appears.
A marketing strategy could be as simple as setting up a lemonade stand outside a football stadium. That’s absolutely a business and marketing decision.
I suppose when I said “marketing strategy” I was thinking more along the lines of what Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Nike, etc. do planned campaigns, market research, audience segmentation, media buying, promotions, sponsorships, and so on.
A logo on a bag, a sign outside a shop, or a logo on an apron is definitely marketing in a broad sense. What I was trying to get at is that not every business needs a complex or highly structured marketing strategy to succeed.
There’s a pub that opened in the small hamlet where my wife is from. The village had never had a pub before. They didn’t run advertising campaigns, flood social media, or push promotions. They simply opened the doors and hired an excellent chef.
The food was phenomenal and very quickly they became known as a food pub. Within a few months I had the CEO of the company I worked for asking me about it because he knew I was down that way at weekends. And he lived 100km in the opposite direction and wanted to go. The reputation had travelled purely through people talking about it.
That’s really the point I’m trying to make. Sometimes reputation, quality, service and word of mouth do the work. Marketing can amplify those things, but it can’t replace them.
I think that’s partly why questioning the role of logos. It can support but not pull people through the doors.