Reading a particular article in the October issue of ‘The Marketer’, the publication of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), caused me to think I was in a time warp. It started, “Marketing plays a key role in the profit making process of organisations and is seen by many as an essential business function, but this is not reflected in the organisational structure of most leading companies.” It highlighted that only 14 FTSE 100 companies have a marketer at board level and included that, “Marketers must work to demonstrate that they add real value if they are to be taken seriously at board level and convince their colleagues of their high professional standards.”

No more claptrap, we’re marketers!

Now I am confident that I am not the only marketing person out there who has passed the first flush of youth. I am equally certain (despite being regarded by some as in my dotage) that the arguments put in the article in 2006 are the precisely the same ones that have appeared in ‘Marketing’ and ‘Marketing Week’ (and probably a myriad of other journals) at frequent intervals over the past thirty or more years. So why is the same claptrap still being peddled…?

My first introduction to Marketing came through a second year option as part of a Business Studies degree course. I recall as clear as day the introduction to the subject and how we looked at the various definitions of marketing - A swift internet search will allow you to confirm that the debate around ‘What is marketing?’ still rages on.

Learning about the 4 P’s

Later in the course we learned about the ‘Four Ps’, the importance of branding, positioning, and how markets can be segmented to derive greater levels of customer satisfaction and better returns for the firm. Classic stuff. So it really isn’t rocket science to conclude that, if marketing is in part about branding, positioning and segmentation, and if FTSE 100 companies ‘don’t buy it’, then marketers have failed decisively over a very large number of years to execute their own wisdom.

The CIM article also seemed to dovetail with a couple of other recent ‘events’. Together they prompted me to look back and consider where marketing is, compared to where it was some thirty years ago when I started out in gainful employment. Sadly (or ‘Grumpily’ as is current vogue), I have to conclude that little has changed – at least little for the good.

Lamenting basic training

On holiday last month, I found myself sitting at a table for lunch with an eminent UK businessman. He is Chairman of a substantial public company and a non-executive director of several more, his achievements in business and contribution through voluntary work have led, amongst other things, to a knighthood, i.e. earned not bought! As we chatted about this and that, we both lamented the relative lack of basic training that companies provide today to new entrants, including graduate scheme entrants, when compared to our early business experiences - both of us had joined our first firms as graduate trainees, he in civil engineering, I in marketing.

We came to limited conclusions – it was a short lunch – but mused that competitive pressures, the focus (sometimes over-focus) on costs, the relative lack of employer / employee loyalty, and the quite rapid opening up of worldwide markets, all played their part in the decline in what we felt was good basic business training.

‘The Inconvenient Truth’

The other ‘event’ was watching a film, ‘The Inconvenient Truth’. This features Al Gore, ex-US Vice-President, who contends that, “humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced”. Tough stuff, but it is tougher still when you see the wealth of compelling statistics and scientific evidence that underpins this perspective.

One piece of evidence highlighted by Gore is the staggering increase in world population. The figures he quotes are along these lines: When he was born some 50 or so years ago, world population was 2.6 billion people. In 2006 it stands at 6.5 billion and estimates put the likely level in 2025 at 8 billion. Now, apart from this representing an awful lot of extra mouths to feed, the growth we have seen and will continue to see also creates substantial increases in demand for goods and services of all types. Especially as worldwide markets become more open and accessible.

So is marketing less or more important when markets are growing rapidly? An interesting point to ponder. As a CEO would you prioritise marketing under these circumstances? Really? Or perhaps you might take the view that speed of action, learning by doing, and ensuring supply keeps up with demand are rather more important say, than market analysis and planning.

And there are some other questions arising from the above:

By now you may well, with some justification, be asking just what relevance all this has to business-to-business (b2b) marketing. So here are some ‘bottom lines’:

1. Decide first what type of marketing is right for your business – There is a wide range of options, so get on the net or dust off those textbooks to understand and adopt the appropriate model

2. Keep it simple and straightforward. Marketing is often overcomplicated. There are many agencies and consultancies out there that will baffle you with the newest techniques and schemes. But take it from an ‘old hand’, many of these are old ideas repackaged. So understand what actually works, stick with it and develop from there.

3. Measure your successes and failures and adapt as you go. Remember, there are rarely ‘golden bullets’, i.e. initiatives that fundamentally change the world - not overnight anyway (unless you count natural disasters or an idiot pushing the nuclear button!).

4. Get out and learn the market for yourself. People have needs. To satisfy them you have to understand the nature of their needs, then provide the goods or services that meet them. In identifying needs we must remember that analysis is only as good as the data on which it is based. In most b2b markets, information is imperfect and/or conflicting. It is essential, therefore, to get out and see for yourself what is going on.

Talk to customers and potential customers but make sure you also get close to the other people operating up and down the supply chain. This pays real dividends. By doing so you will get a much better feel for the market and market trends. This allows better appraisal of how you and your organisation can position for best advantage.

Getting out in this way is not always simple for office-based marketers. Justifying the time out of the office may not always be easy. Some CEOs, MDs and even Marketing Directors still have quaint old-fashioned time-clock mentalities. However, planning for getting out to the market is a discipline that we shirk at our peril.

5. Value and grow your network of relationships. While simple to say, this often proves to be the biggest obstacle to business growth and to an individual’s own career development.

Think of relationship development in terms of building trust, and where:

Trust = (Credibility x Intimacy) / Risk

You cannot translate this ‘Trust Formula’ into numbers, but using it will help understand more about the nature of relationship development and management:

And finally, two thoughts that return to earlier themes:

6. Don’t get hung up on titles. Business was around long before the term ‘Marketing’ was invented and I suspect it will be around long after we dispense with the term. So why use the word, ‘Marketing’, when it is badly understood at best, or where people are actively hostile to the term? Better to talk about the benefits and tangible results of what you do, rather than to wear a label that has impacts you cannot control.

7. Look at the total consequences of your activities. B2b marketing practitioners need to be as aware as anyone of the impact they have on the wider world. The numbers shown in the organisation’s profit and loss account are not the whole story. Whatever your stance on global warming, big changes are occurring. These will have momentous impacts on markets and how they are served. I hope in another thirty year’s time I can report that marketing has more positively changed the way forward.

By Peter Gordon,
Founder-Director, OSGL
peter.gordon@osgl.co.uk
44 (0) 1372 745000
© Peter Gordon, OSGL 2006 for THE Marketing Leaders ^TM

N.B. This article expresses the views of Peter Gordon, and does not necessarily reflect those of THE Marketing Leaders ^TM.
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Peter Gordon is a Founder Director of Otterson Smith Gordon Limited (OSGL), a consultancy that helps client ‘shape opinion and achieve change’. He has extensive experience in strategy, marketing, change management and communications.

Peter has worked in management and director roles in Unilever, Dalgety, Allied Lyons, BACS and KPMG. He has consulted widely in the public sector - MOD, Employment Services, Foreign Office, DVO & DVLA - and private sector - AstraZeneca, NatWest, British Sugar, BP Amoco. Client projects include corporate strategy, business transformation, marketing, change management and productivity improvement.

Peter has been a tutor for a leadership development organisation for over 20 years and is passionate regarding the need to address the ‘human issues’ if organisations are to reach their full potential.
© Peter Gordon, OSGL 2006