What is a marketing engineer
From village market information to AI tools
By Adam Smith · Published · Updated · 5 min read
A marketing engineer turns market knowledge into working systems. I use the term to describe how I connect research, marketing, sales and day-to-day operations, then put the agreed work in place.
A shared vegetable garden. From Adam Smith’s fieldwork archive.
One of the clearest examples comes from my work in Laos, where an agricultural calendar could look different from one village to the next.
One province different calendars
In HouayGneu, the women’s focus group recorded garlic and kale in January–March, maize and rice in June–November, and cabbage in September–November. Their calendar showed the pattern of crop activity through the year. Getting produce to a buyer brought another constraint: distance from the market and a poor road.
Three days later, a separate women’s discussion in Houaychouang recorded a different crop mix, including cucumber, long green beans and pumpkin. Those notes described villagers taking produce to market by truck.
The men’s discussion in Houaychouang captured another part of the problem. The translated focus-group notes recorded:
“They produce their crops every seasonal without knowing that which month is good for sale”
The calendar described when crops were grown. The group also needed information about when those crops might find a good market.
Across Sayaboury province, different ethnic communities grew different kinds of produce. Some villages were on busy roads; others were isolated or farther from the central market. Those differences shaped what a workable selling plan could look like.
HISTORICAL FIELD RESEARCH · LAOS · 2013–2014
Explore the village agricultural calendars
17 villages in the roster; 16 with calendar records. Select a vegetable, crop or animal to compare only the villages whose sources list it.
The starting point, before the water systems
Adam describes these calendars as the project’s pre-intervention baseline: what villages were already doing before the French Red Cross installed gravity-fed water systems. They helped the project plan the introduction of vegetables and livestock that could generate income, based on each village’s circumstances.
The general aim was to sell roughly half the production and use the other half for household consumption, with the balance varying from village to village. This was a project aim, not a measured result or an identical allocation prescribed for every village.
Context provided by Adam Smith, October 2026, separately from the dated source-calendar transcription.
Choose your comparison
Choose villages 17 selected
MONTH-BY-MONTH COMPARISON
Agricultural calendar
On smaller screens, scroll the calendar sideways. Open a row for its source and caveats.
Source coverage: all 17 villages
Eight villages in Hongsa and nine in Xienghone. Namkham’s calendar was not located; Namkhom is a different village. This coverage list is independent of the comparison filters.
Sources and interpretation
Calendar evidence comes from Market Study, Appendix 3. The later Action Plans for Market Access corroborate the village roster. Open a row for its original PDF page, source group, discussion date and caveats.
25 calendar charts; 201 calendar rows; 62 uncertain month cells; 8 untranslated labels. Additional activities listed without a monthly calendar remain visible with timing explicitly unknown. Dotted strokes and merged cells are not treated as proof of activity across an entire cell. Dates are retained as written where day/month order is unclear.
Building the Market Information System
Our response was to develop a Market Information System with the farming groups, the Lao Women Union and local project partners. It needed to connect what was happening in the markets with the decisions people faced in each village.
The Lao Women Union collected market data weekly. Prices were part of it. The collection templates also covered produce quality, where it came from, estimated sales, whether supply met demand, and comments from traders. The Lao Women Union analysed the data and used it in village training. [2]
That information then had to reach people who could use it. Each village had practical tools, including a chalkboard, a pinboard and an A5 notebook. Elected Market Access Representatives received training adapted to their skills and their village’s needs.
The weekly routine called for the Lao Women Union to review the market information with the district Small Business Development Officer, decide what to share with each village, and phone its representative. The representative could update the board and discuss the information with the farming group. The methodology guide records that representatives were updating noticeboards after those calls. [2]
Information also travelled back from the villages. Representatives were encouraged to discuss what farmers were growing, estimate quantities and harvest timing, and identify what else they needed to know from buyers. The routine included recording village updates and reporting them back to the district team.
The chalkboard was the visible part of a larger system: people collecting information, checking its relevance, sharing it and using it to make decisions.
Sharing market information at a village noticeboard. From Adam Smith’s fieldwork archive.
Village groups developed different selling plans. The project case study describes selling to nearby villages, establishing roadside markets and taking produce to market by motorbike. Those choices reflected local conditions and the options available to each group. [3]
What marketing engineering means in practice
Looking back, this is the kind of work I mean by marketing engineering. Understand the market and the people involved. Find where useful information stops moving. Design a practical way to get it to the person making the decision, then help that process work in everyday life.
The work includes research and commercial judgement, as well as implementation. Someone has to choose the information worth collecting, make the tools usable, define who does what and check whether the process is helping.
In Laos, that meant village calendars, market research, phone calls, training and chalkboards. The design depended on how people actually worked.
Applying the same approach with AI tools
Today, I apply that approach when working with AI tools, business information and follow-up workflows.
In my current part-time work at JTA, I’m developing a practical AI second brain and redesigning research, account intelligence and follow-up workflows. That work is in progress. [4]
For a business, an equivalent information flow might look like this:
- Bring relevant customer history and market research together so the team can find the context it needs.
- Use AI to prepare a first-pass summary, keeping links to the source material.
- Have a person check the important facts and decide what deserves attention.
- Record the next action and its owner in the team’s working system.
- Review what happened and improve the information or process for the next decision.
This is an illustrative workflow. Its details depend on the business, the information it can use and the decisions that need human review.
The design questions are familiar. Who needs this information? What will they do with it? How current must it be? Who checks it? What happens after the decision?
AI gives me another set of tools for organising and working with information. The business still needs a clear purpose for that information and people who understand how to use it.
Putting marketing engineering to work
For a founder-led business, this work can connect the website and marketing activity with enquiries, sales follow-up and the systems the team uses each day.
A useful starting point is one decision or repeated task that is harder than it should be. Trace the information it needs, where that information comes from and where the work gets stuck. Then build and test a better way through it.
That is what I aim to do as a marketing engineer: understand the business, design a practical response and put it to work with the people who will use it.
Explore Business Systems & AI, or get in touch to discuss a workflow in your business.
Sources
Explore the fieldwork resources
Practical support for your next step.
Have a workflow that needs a better approach?
Tell me what is happening now and what you need to improve. We can work out a focused starting point.