Teaching as Marketing (and vice versa)

There is an interesting post by Kathy Sierra on her blog, Creating Passionate Users, today. As I get closer to becoming a teacher I really see her point. Marketing is the art of understanding your audience or, even better, creating an audience. Teachers have to know their audience to disseminate information and impart learning effectively.

I look forward to working with the marketing departments at companies I work at. They’re usually very engaging and intelligent people. Do you use your marketing department’s reseach? Have you ever teamed up to complete a project that affects your students/customers? I’d love to hear your examples.