CIM Live Debate Leeds

MARKETING FUTURE FOCUS: 2015 – 2025 Yorkshire

cim.co.uk

DEBATE

DEBATE

MARKETING FUTURE FOCUS:YORKSHIRE THE PANEL: Aisha Khan is the ex-head of marketing at YPO, which specialises in public sector procurement, supplying products and services to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

She has over 13 years of marketing experience in the healthcare and fuel industries with a specific focus on e-commerce, digital marketing, communications, branding and product development. She most recently oversaw the marketing division for YPO and was responsible for successfully delivering a new e-commerce platform and rebranding and repositioning the YPO brand to launch into new markets. Prior to this Aisha worked at Ecolab Inc - a global leader in water, hygiene and energy services, in a global marketing role within the healthcare division. She graduated from University of Leeds with a Masters in Advertising and Marketing, has been a Chartered Marketer since 2006 and has recently been selected to sit on the committee for CIM Mid Yorkshire.

Chris Daly is director of customer experience at CIM. Having joined the marketing organisation in 2001 as operations manager in its training division, he has since held various posts before moving to membership services. He now heads up a team that supports members with their enquiries relating to applications, renewals, benefits, online issues and assessment entry. He was promoted to director of membership in July 2011 and now has responsibility for all of the membership services and CIM’s international membership operation, UK regional and branch network, and the many special interest groups throughout the world. He was educated at Eton College before gaining a BA in Modern History, Politics and Russian Studies from Durham University. He went on to acquire a broad spectrum of management experience ranging from roles in the City, The British Army, attaining the rank of Major with The Blues

The CIM is convening the largest conversation in marketing history with the Marketing 2025 Hackathon in January. This is an ambitious open innovation initiative designed to crowd source practical ideas and solutions to the issues, challenges and opportunities facing marketing over the next decade. Ahead of the event, the foundations were laid for the Hackathon with a round table discussion in Leeds – one of a series of live events in 11 cities across the UK. The event marked the start of a dialogue amongst marketers internationally to help articulate the 10 to 12 key themes which the Hackathon should address. Senior marketing leaders shared their thoughts and perspectives with an audience in a dialogue that comes in a highly interactive, participative experience looking at the big issues 10 years out which could make or break marketing’s influence and value. This is mirrored by a virtual dialogue on Twitter using #marketing2025. and Royals, Household Cavalry Regiment; and on leaving the army joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1995.

Joe Chetcuti is director of Sheffield-based Front Agency. He is a fellow of CIM who spent his formative years getting his CIM qualifications whilst working in the video games industry for the likes of Gremlin, Atari and Microsoft.

He then moved to the agency side, heading up client accounts for Virgin One, Marks & Spencer and Axa Insurance. He launched his own agency, Frontideas.com in 2004 with clients including Regatta, Chester Zoo and Morphy Richards. A believer in marketing as the primary driving force behind successful organisations and an advocate of intelligence based innovation and creativity, he blogs on deliberateaccidents.com and is also an associate lecturer in Marketing at Sheffield Hallam University.

Kevin Anderson is chair of CIM Mid Yorkshire and global marketing director of Leeds firm, thebigword. He graduated from the University of Birmingham with an MBA in International Business and held a number of marketing manager roles in technology and B2B organisations before relocating to Leeds

02

from Gloucester in 2013 to join thebigword.

The Leeds-based business provides translation and interpreting services, employs 500 people based in 12 offices in nine countries and works with more than 12,000 linguists worldwide.

As global marketing director he is chair of the executive team and responsible for thebigword brand, directing the implementation and management of the customer-facing strategy to drive growth within new and existing markets.

THE CHAIR: The panel was chaired by Caroline Theobald, managing director of the Bridge Club. Caroline founded Bridge Club Ltd in 2000 as a private company with a mission to ‘champion, foster, and accelerate enterprise and entrepreneurship’.

Bridge Club has introduced thousands of people to like-minded individuals and given them access to a wealth of contacts. These connections have resulted in successful partnerships, lucrative contracts and a whole host of other business benefits.

In 2007, Caroline accepted a Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion and became Honorary Consul for Sweden. In recognition of her Consul work, she was made the honorary chairman

of the north east chapter of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in 2010 and now has the satisfaction of seeing the formalisation of ‘Creative Links’ a formal commitment to collaborate between North East England and Vastra Gotaland County.

She sits on the boards of several companies, is the co-founder of Gabriel Investors LLP and the Northern Institute for Business Ethics and chairman of International Newcastle.

She is also the independent chairman of the BQ Live debates that take place around the country.

THE DEBATE: Caroline Theobald set the context for the evening by explaining that the views of everyone present could help shape the upcoming Hackathon. She also highlighted the diversity of the organisations represented on the night, which included digital and branding agencies, marketing departments in health sector firms, manufacturers, global and regional business, universities, while a number of marketing students were also present.

“We’ve got a really broad spectrum of people here so hopefully we’ll get lots of different voices tonight to pull through some key themes,” she said.

Chris Daly then sought to provide an overview of some of the challenges facing marketing and marketeers today against a backdrop of rapid change in the sector.

He said: “If we look at what the world was like 10 years ago, we can see just how much it has changed. Twitter hadn’t been invented,

People now want to know what are the values of you as a business, how ethical are you as an investment Facebook was limited to a couple of American universities, LinkedIn hadn’t reached profitability, Gmail and Google Maps weren’t around, there weren’t any apps and implementation took months as opposed to minutes. It’s extraordinary.

“That was just 10 years ago and the pace of change is not getting any slower; in fact it’s probably going to get faster.

“It has had a transformational impact on how we work and on our lives as individuals. And no corner of business has felt this change more than marketing,” he added. He explained how there has been a distinct shift in power from brands to consumers in recent years.

“People now want to know what are the values of you as a business, how ethical are you as an investment,” he said.

“Through social media and the web there is a new model of engagement, and it’s really based on broadcast dialogue. Customers actually now want to have that relationship and people want to have a relationship with people they do

03

business with.

“There also has been a meteoric rise in customer expectation. Doing the basic stuff is child’s play at the moment, and it’s now about how you can exceed expectations. People want communications that are timely, relevant and personal.”

Meanwhile, there is an air of mistrust among consumers spawned by numerous banking wrongdoings and the politicians’ expenses scandal, he added.

“Businesses who people are spending their money on and investing in must have a clear code of ethics they must abide by now,” he said. Further challenges – and opportunities – come from the sheer amount of accessible data available to marketeers now compared to 10 years ago.

“There’s been a lot of investment in a lot of data and there is more information than we know what to do with. The question is about how you sift the smart data from the big data and how much time is involved with that.”

Another major change that has swept through organisations in the last decade is a blurring of the roles within marketing and its not-so-distant cousins.

“Where do social communications, customer services and marcomms sit, for example? And should marketing be sucked into marcomms?”

Then there is the enormous volume of people that brands and products can potentially reach today.

“The trailer for the new Star Wars film had 40 million hits in 17 hours. That is just such an >>

DEBATE

DEBATE

MARKETING FUTURE FOCUS:YORKSHIRE THE PANEL: Aisha Khan is the ex-head of marketing at YPO, which specialises in public sector procurement, supplying products and services to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

She has over 13 years of marketing experience in the healthcare and fuel industries with a specific focus on e-commerce, digital marketing, communications, branding and product development. She most recently oversaw the marketing division for YPO and was responsible for successfully delivering a new e-commerce platform and rebranding and repositioning the YPO brand to launch into new markets. Prior to this Aisha worked at Ecolab Inc - a global leader in water, hygiene and energy services, in a global marketing role within the healthcare division. She graduated from University of Leeds with a Masters in Advertising and Marketing, has been a Chartered Marketer since 2006 and has recently been selected to sit on the committee for CIM Mid Yorkshire.

Chris Daly is director of customer experience at CIM. Having joined the marketing organisation in 2001 as operations manager in its training division, he has since held various posts before moving to membership services. He now heads up a team that supports members with their enquiries relating to applications, renewals, benefits, online issues and assessment entry. He was promoted to director of membership in July 2011 and now has responsibility for all of the membership services and CIM’s international membership operation, UK regional and branch network, and the many special interest groups throughout the world. He was educated at Eton College before gaining a BA in Modern History, Politics and Russian Studies from Durham University. He went on to acquire a broad spectrum of management experience ranging from roles in the City, The British Army, attaining the rank of Major with The Blues

The CIM is convening the largest conversation in marketing history with the Marketing 2025 Hackathon in January. This is an ambitious open innovation initiative designed to crowd source practical ideas and solutions to the issues, challenges and opportunities facing marketing over the next decade. Ahead of the event, the foundations were laid for the Hackathon with a round table discussion in Leeds – one of a series of live events in 11 cities across the UK. The event marked the start of a dialogue amongst marketers internationally to help articulate the 10 to 12 key themes which the Hackathon should address. Senior marketing leaders shared their thoughts and perspectives with an audience in a dialogue that comes in a highly interactive, participative experience looking at the big issues 10 years out which could make or break marketing’s influence and value. This is mirrored by a virtual dialogue on Twitter using #marketing2025. and Royals, Household Cavalry Regiment; and on leaving the army joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1995.

Joe Chetcuti is director of Sheffield-based Front Agency. He is a fellow of CIM who spent his formative years getting his CIM qualifications whilst working in the video games industry for the likes of Gremlin, Atari and Microsoft.

He then moved to the agency side, heading up client accounts for Virgin One, Marks & Spencer and Axa Insurance. He launched his own agency, Frontideas.com in 2004 with clients including Regatta, Chester Zoo and Morphy Richards. A believer in marketing as the primary driving force behind successful organisations and an advocate of intelligence based innovation and creativity, he blogs on deliberateaccidents.com and is also an associate lecturer in Marketing at Sheffield Hallam University.

Kevin Anderson is chair of CIM Mid Yorkshire and global marketing director of Leeds firm, thebigword. He graduated from the University of Birmingham with an MBA in International Business and held a number of marketing manager roles in technology and B2B organisations before relocating to Leeds

02

from Gloucester in 2013 to join thebigword.

The Leeds-based business provides translation and interpreting services, employs 500 people based in 12 offices in nine countries and works with more than 12,000 linguists worldwide.

As global marketing director he is chair of the executive team and responsible for thebigword brand, directing the implementation and management of the customer-facing strategy to drive growth within new and existing markets.

THE CHAIR: The panel was chaired by Caroline Theobald, managing director of the Bridge Club. Caroline founded Bridge Club Ltd in 2000 as a private company with a mission to ‘champion, foster, and accelerate enterprise and entrepreneurship’.

Bridge Club has introduced thousands of people to like-minded individuals and given them access to a wealth of contacts. These connections have resulted in successful partnerships, lucrative contracts and a whole host of other business benefits.

In 2007, Caroline accepted a Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion and became Honorary Consul for Sweden. In recognition of her Consul work, she was made the honorary chairman

of the north east chapter of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in 2010 and now has the satisfaction of seeing the formalisation of ‘Creative Links’ a formal commitment to collaborate between North East England and Vastra Gotaland County.

She sits on the boards of several companies, is the co-founder of Gabriel Investors LLP and the Northern Institute for Business Ethics and chairman of International Newcastle.

She is also the independent chairman of the BQ Live debates that take place around the country.

THE DEBATE: Caroline Theobald set the context for the evening by explaining that the views of everyone present could help shape the upcoming Hackathon. She also highlighted the diversity of the organisations represented on the night, which included digital and branding agencies, marketing departments in health sector firms, manufacturers, global and regional business, universities, while a number of marketing students were also present.

“We’ve got a really broad spectrum of people here so hopefully we’ll get lots of different voices tonight to pull through some key themes,” she said.

Chris Daly then sought to provide an overview of some of the challenges facing marketing and marketeers today against a backdrop of rapid change in the sector.

He said: “If we look at what the world was like 10 years ago, we can see just how much it has changed. Twitter hadn’t been invented,

People now want to know what are the values of you as a business, how ethical are you as an investment Facebook was limited to a couple of American universities, LinkedIn hadn’t reached profitability, Gmail and Google Maps weren’t around, there weren’t any apps and implementation took months as opposed to minutes. It’s extraordinary.

“That was just 10 years ago and the pace of change is not getting any slower; in fact it’s probably going to get faster.

“It has had a transformational impact on how we work and on our lives as individuals. And no corner of business has felt this change more than marketing,” he added. He explained how there has been a distinct shift in power from brands to consumers in recent years.

“People now want to know what are the values of you as a business, how ethical are you as an investment,” he said.

“Through social media and the web there is a new model of engagement, and it’s really based on broadcast dialogue. Customers actually now want to have that relationship and people want to have a relationship with people they do

03

business with.

“There also has been a meteoric rise in customer expectation. Doing the basic stuff is child’s play at the moment, and it’s now about how you can exceed expectations. People want communications that are timely, relevant and personal.”

Meanwhile, there is an air of mistrust among consumers spawned by numerous banking wrongdoings and the politicians’ expenses scandal, he added.

“Businesses who people are spending their money on and investing in must have a clear code of ethics they must abide by now,” he said. Further challenges – and opportunities – come from the sheer amount of accessible data available to marketeers now compared to 10 years ago.

“There’s been a lot of investment in a lot of data and there is more information than we know what to do with. The question is about how you sift the smart data from the big data and how much time is involved with that.”

Another major change that has swept through organisations in the last decade is a blurring of the roles within marketing and its not-so-distant cousins.

“Where do social communications, customer services and marcomms sit, for example? And should marketing be sucked into marcomms?”

Then there is the enormous volume of people that brands and products can potentially reach today.

“The trailer for the new Star Wars film had 40 million hits in 17 hours. That is just such an >>

DEBATE extraordinary volume of people. So should that type of channel of communication rest with the CIO or the CTO and who is analysing that?

Who owns that digital situation? Who has responsibility for the brand?”

Daly went on to explain that, in some businesses, HR departments have responsibility for brands now. “They feel their staff should be living and breathing the brand values that they personify and therefore HR really gets the brand.

“Diageo [the global drinks empire] doesn’t have a director of marketing, it has a director of brand and it’s all about ‘brand values’, so where does marketing fit in? What will the landscape look like in the next 10 years?”

He suggested that marketing could either be marginalised or strengthen by positioning itself at the heart of businesses and business strategy.

“Do we lose ground to the brand people and customer service operations? Or is customer experience and business development where the real sales and marketing functions exist?

“Or, can we get that marketing position really clearly understood, at the centre of strategic business decisions, irrespective of the size of the organisation?

“So I think we need an understanding of how we can position marketing at the centre of that business decision-making process and what the challenges are that we need to overcome.”

Caroline Theobald then asked Aisha Khan to set out what she sees as the challenges facing marketing now and in the next 10 years.

Aisha Khan: “With the pace of change that has happened over the last 10 years, we can definitely see the next 10 years changing just as fast. For me technology no doubt has been one of the game changers over those 10 years and will continue to be so in coming years.

“For me there are probably two fundamental things that will be crucial over the next 10 years. The first is how do we actually keep our customers engaged? There is so much technology out there, like beacons, sensors and wearable technology.

“But at the same time consumers are more and more reluctant to share their data. So how are we going to balance technology and that reluctance from customers?” Aisha cited recent research which estimates that the average person switches between devices 27 times per day, while it is forecast that if current trends

DEBATE

So I think we need an understanding of how we can position marketing at the centre of that business decision-making process and what the challenges are that we need to overcome

continue, we could all be using up to six devices regularly by 2020.

“So what does that mean in terms of how we communicate with our customers? I think there are three reasons why customers are feeling quite reluctant to share their data: Not trusting an organisation enough, not seeing the value that they are getting from an organisation by sharing their data and the fact that they just can’t be bothered because the process takes too long.”

“So with that in mind, a quote I came across

04

which I think is relevant says ‘humans do not remember the pitch, they remember the experience’. So no matter what happens with technology we have to remember that the most important thing in the process is humans.”

Next, Joe Chetcuti explained why, for all the challenges in today’s marketing world, he remains passionate about the discipline and why others should be equally enthused.

“I’ve always thought that marketing was where the good guys were. They were the people who weren’t ripping people off, people who

wanted to understand the consumer, the people who wanted to beat competitors through understanding.

“And I still feel very strongly that that is the case, even though I now work in advertising, which is seen sometimes as on the far edge of marketing. I still feel it’s one of the places where you can actually do really good work.

“But my issue with marketing in terms of where it is going in the next 10 years is how do we keep marketing at the heart of companies?

How do we keep marketing being strategic for organisations?”

He also pointed to the increasing occurrence of businesses with no official in-house marketing function.

“I’ve seen two new clients in the last month, one a £20m company and the other a £6m one, both of which sell brands to consumers, yet neither has a marketing function.

“They don’t have anyone with the name marketing in their title. They do marketing, they just don’t realise it. They are happy to engage with marketing agencies like mine but they don’t see the value in a marketing function.

That worries me.

“I also work with a lot of companies where marketing is reduced. I also hear people – usually men – say, ‘we’ve got some marketing girls’ which is terrible. So that’s my issue; how to keep marketing at the heart of organisations and keep wearing the white cowboy hat as the good guys when there are so many distractions in the world of technology?”

Kevin Anderson shared similar concerns to Joe’s, reflecting that: “The internal understanding of marketing across all industries is absolutely shocking. Like Joe’s example of ‘the marketing girls’, it’s getting asked ‘do you do golf balls?’ This is not right. The CIM is here to help us but it is merely an enabler. Everyone in this room should be responsible for the positioning of marketing.

“The fact is marketing brings so much more value than perceived,” he added. Kevin also highlighted the issue of data as a major challenge to marketeers.

“We talk about big data and we think we’ve got all the answers. But we haven’t, we’ve just got data and so it’s about trying to get that insightful data out of the swathes of data coming in in reams and reams.”

He also suggested the debate – and forthcoming CIM Hackathon event – was looking too far ahead in trying to map out the most changeable of industries 10 years in advance.

“I really do think that looking 10 years ahead is too far ahead. We’ve got issues today that we need to fix. Think of all those things in the last 10 years that we didn’t see coming. And, we have all these clever economists who didn’t see the banking crisis coming. So how can we be asking about 2025?”

However, drawing on his experience at translation and interpreting services firm thebigword, he added: “We can debate the likes of convergence, the Internet of things, globalisation and big data, but one thing I must say we absolutely do need to be tracking in the next 10 years is the ability to communicate.”

He explained how smartphones are expected to total 1.75 billion by the end of 2014, representing 25% of the world’s population.

“China boasts 550 million people on the internet and they’ll certainly be using social

media. Recently, 76% of the world’s internet users said in survey ‘if what I was looking at was in the language I understood, I would buy more.’

“Almost one in 10 people in the UK don’t have English as a first language. So after 2025 the challenges are about communicating. We need to be able to communicate one-to-one and language and culture has to be clearly understood as the world continues to shrink.

Finally, he warned: “As marketeers we need to be driving the agenda or just be swallowed up by another department, or end up doing the golf balls.”

Before the debate was opened up to audience questions and suggestions, Chris Daly offered up some of his current concerns about marketing. Firstly he highlighted the continual struggle to “get a clear definition of marketing itself”.

Quoting management author Peter Drucker, he suggested marketing is “any part of the business viewed from the customer’s perspective”. >>

We talk about big data and we think we’ve got all the answers. But we haven’t, we’ve just got data and so it’s about trying to get that insightful data out of the swathes of data coming in in reams and reams

05

DEBATE extraordinary volume of people. So should that type of channel of communication rest with the CIO or the CTO and who is analysing that?

Who owns that digital situation? Who has responsibility for the brand?”

Daly went on to explain that, in some businesses, HR departments have responsibility for brands now. “They feel their staff should be living and breathing the brand values that they personify and therefore HR really gets the brand.

“Diageo [the global drinks empire] doesn’t have a director of marketing, it has a director of brand and it’s all about ‘brand values’, so where does marketing fit in? What will the landscape look like in the next 10 years?”

He suggested that marketing could either be marginalised or strengthen by positioning itself at the heart of businesses and business strategy.

“Do we lose ground to the brand people and customer service operations? Or is customer experience and business development where the real sales and marketing functions exist?

“Or, can we get that marketing position really clearly understood, at the centre of strategic business decisions, irrespective of the size of the organisation?

“So I think we need an understanding of how we can position marketing at the centre of that business decision-making process and what the challenges are that we need to overcome.”

Caroline Theobald then asked Aisha Khan to set out what she sees as the challenges facing marketing now and in the next 10 years.

Aisha Khan: “With the pace of change that has happened over the last 10 years, we can definitely see the next 10 years changing just as fast. For me technology no doubt has been one of the game changers over those 10 years and will continue to be so in coming years.

“For me there are probably two fundamental things that will be crucial over the next 10 years. The first is how do we actually keep our customers engaged? There is so much technology out there, like beacons, sensors and wearable technology.

“But at the same time consumers are more and more reluctant to share their data. So how are we going to balance technology and that reluctance from customers?” Aisha cited recent research which estimates that the average person switches between devices 27 times per day, while it is forecast that if current trends

DEBATE

So I think we need an understanding of how we can position marketing at the centre of that business decision-making process and what the challenges are that we need to overcome

continue, we could all be using up to six devices regularly by 2020.

“So what does that mean in terms of how we communicate with our customers? I think there are three reasons why customers are feeling quite reluctant to share their data: Not trusting an organisation enough, not seeing the value that they are getting from an organisation by sharing their data and the fact that they just can’t be bothered because the process takes too long.”

“So with that in mind, a quote I came across

04

which I think is relevant says ‘humans do not remember the pitch, they remember the experience’. So no matter what happens with technology we have to remember that the most important thing in the process is humans.”

Next, Joe Chetcuti explained why, for all the challenges in today’s marketing world, he remains passionate about the discipline and why others should be equally enthused.

“I’ve always thought that marketing was where the good guys were. They were the people who weren’t ripping people off, people who

wanted to understand the consumer, the people who wanted to beat competitors through understanding.

“And I still feel very strongly that that is the case, even though I now work in advertising, which is seen sometimes as on the far edge of marketing. I still feel it’s one of the places where you can actually do really good work.

“But my issue with marketing in terms of where it is going in the next 10 years is how do we keep marketing at the heart of companies?

How do we keep marketing being strategic for organisations?”

He also pointed to the increasing occurrence of businesses with no official in-house marketing function.

“I’ve seen two new clients in the last month, one a £20m company and the other a £6m one, both of which sell brands to consumers, yet neither has a marketing function.

“They don’t have anyone with the name marketing in their title. They do marketing, they just don’t realise it. They are happy to engage with marketing agencies like mine but they don’t see the value in a marketing function.

That worries me.

“I also work with a lot of companies where marketing is reduced. I also hear people – usually men – say, ‘we’ve got some marketing girls’ which is terrible. So that’s my issue; how to keep marketing at the heart of organisations and keep wearing the white cowboy hat as the good guys when there are so many distractions in the world of technology?”

Kevin Anderson shared similar concerns to Joe’s, reflecting that: “The internal understanding of marketing across all industries is absolutely shocking. Like Joe’s example of ‘the marketing girls’, it’s getting asked ‘do you do golf balls?’ This is not right. The CIM is here to help us but it is merely an enabler. Everyone in this room should be responsible for the positioning of marketing.

“The fact is marketing brings so much more value than perceived,” he added. Kevin also highlighted the issue of data as a major challenge to marketeers.

“We talk about big data and we think we’ve got all the answers. But we haven’t, we’ve just got data and so it’s about trying to get that insightful data out of the swathes of data coming in in reams and reams.”

He also suggested the debate – and forthcoming CIM Hackathon event – was looking too far ahead in trying to map out the most changeable of industries 10 years in advance.

“I really do think that looking 10 years ahead is too far ahead. We’ve got issues today that we need to fix. Think of all those things in the last 10 years that we didn’t see coming. And, we have all these clever economists who didn’t see the banking crisis coming. So how can we be asking about 2025?”

However, drawing on his experience at translation and interpreting services firm thebigword, he added: “We can debate the likes of convergence, the Internet of things, globalisation and big data, but one thing I must say we absolutely do need to be tracking in the next 10 years is the ability to communicate.”

He explained how smartphones are expected to total 1.75 billion by the end of 2014, representing 25% of the world’s population.

“China boasts 550 million people on the internet and they’ll certainly be using social

media. Recently, 76% of the world’s internet users said in survey ‘if what I was looking at was in the language I understood, I would buy more.’

“Almost one in 10 people in the UK don’t have English as a first language. So after 2025 the challenges are about communicating. We need to be able to communicate one-to-one and language and culture has to be clearly understood as the world continues to shrink.

Finally, he warned: “As marketeers we need to be driving the agenda or just be swallowed up by another department, or end up doing the golf balls.”

Before the debate was opened up to audience questions and suggestions, Chris Daly offered up some of his current concerns about marketing. Firstly he highlighted the continual struggle to “get a clear definition of marketing itself”.

Quoting management author Peter Drucker, he suggested marketing is “any part of the business viewed from the customer’s perspective”. >>

We talk about big data and we think we’ve got all the answers. But we haven’t, we’ve just got data and so it’s about trying to get that insightful data out of the swathes of data coming in in reams and reams

05

DEBATE

DEBATE But, he said: “My fear is that marketing will be lost in the noise of other people claiming that as their functionality. I would like marketing to establish a clear leadership role within organisations, and to be supported. It really involves integrating all marketing activity within the organisation.

“For example, if there is the possibility of interrogating all that big data coming in to get smart data, who has the specialist skills? Is it the CTO, the CIO or marketing? How do you do the measurements to steer product development?

And what are the KPIs [key performance indicators]? Is it just return on investment or return on engagement?”

“So, in the areas of integration, interrogation and impact, marketing needs to take the lead.

With the pace of change happening at the moment, we also need to create impactful communication and influence people’s behaviours. You see this in social marketing, such as governments spending money to stop obesity, smoking and drinking.”

Another concern Chris harbours is the widespread lack of appreciation of marketing as a profession and the specialist skills its practitioners require.

“If you had a chartered surveyor planning the structural support of a [company’s] building, noone would challenge him, but everyone seems to have a view on marketing campaigns.

“But we are not the ‘colouring-in’ department.

Actually marketing people are the price differentiator and that has a direct link to the profit margin. If you get it wrong it could cost you millions of pounds.

“So what we’re trying to do is create a better competitive advantage by meeting customer needs in a functional fashion. So how do we keep our heads when everyone else is trying to implement influence on us?

So what we’re trying to do is create a better competitive advantage by meeting customer needs in a functional fashion. So how do we keep our heads when everyone else is trying to implement influence on us?

06

“How do we maintain our powers and importance in terms of making businesses successful through true marketing?”

Returning to Kevin Anderson’s earlier point, Caroline Theobald asked audience members whether they thought forecasting how marketing might look in 2025 was looking too far into the future.

A few hands were raised in agreement with Kevin, including that of marketing consultant Sharon McCutcheon. She said: “I think it is too far away. I work with small businesses and, with the economic situation businesses are operating with, even five years is pretty difficult to predict. We’ve talked about possibly seeing people using six devices. But we might actually see a device which consolidates all the other devices, so it’s very hard trying to predict what’s going to happen.”

But Victoria Boldison, an international brand controller, said: “Looking further into the future will help us stay relevant and we can engage with analysts to help identify the technologies [of the future].”

Dave Pannell, of digital marketing firm The Design Mechanics, said: “I like the idea of looking 10 years ahead. If you look at what’s changed in the last 10 years it was mainly channels rather than marketing in general, and marketing is still marketing.” He added that the increasingly modular nature of marketing and its various manifestations would be a trend worth monitoring over the next 10 years.

Then Andrew Sherratt, principal at sales and marketing study centre SPA Professional Academy said: “I think 10 years is right if we’re looking at the big picture and if that’s what CIM is looking at to make sure the profession is in the right place. It does take that long – the evolution of an organisation does take a long time. If we just look at our own planning perspective for the next three to five years, we won’t be able to create the right role for marketing in organisations.”

Andrew Earnshaw of Up & Running Marketing said: “It depends who you are and where you are. For the CIM, I think it’s the right thing because it is the difference between being a leader or a follower. If you are a leader you’ve got to be looking 10 years in advance and you can pull the market towards that. You could influence the market if you’ve got strong

enough messages.”

Caroline Theobald: “Let’s also think about the value of marketers in a changing world - a world where there is a trust deficit and so much data. How can marketers optimise rather than be devalued by these factors?”

Aisha Khan: “There is a danger that marketing can be so widespread that actually we’re not valued as a profession. I think it’s really important to discuss that.”

Aisha explained how, in her previous role at YPO, her marketing department had touched seemingly every aspect of the organisation.

She added that she believes marketing sits at the core of communications and customer experience, whether or not that includes the digital space, but warned: “Marketing has a number of different disciplines [within it] but we need to be very clear what our remit is.

“The reason nobody questions other professions, like accountants or architects, is because it’s very clear what they do. We don’t have that distinction.”

Julian Rawel of marketing consultancy Market Echoes said: “The type of conversation we’re having this evening has been going on in marketing for years. I started out as an entrepreneur who got into marketing when we needed to hand out titles but it’s evolved over long period of time. And so for me, marketing and sales has been about understanding customers, understanding competition and delivering strategy.

“The problem marketing has is that most people outside marketing see marketing as being about marketing communications. And that’s why we often get moved down organisations.

Marketing has a number of different disciplines [within it] but we need to be very clear what our remit is They don’t see it as being strategic or see the marketeers as being the people who should be almost representing the customer and competitor in the boardroom. Until we are actually moving that way, I think we’re going to potentially keep going in this diminishing circle.”

Julian added: “Also, in terms of big data, one of the problems we face as marketeers is thinking that we’ve got to also be specialists in data technology. But we absolutely don’t, we’ve got to be specialists in getting other people to interpret the data on our behalf. We need tell them ‘this is what we need’ because we are representing the customers and the competition. But don’t ask us to necessarily understand how you get it, because our role must be to drive the interpretation.”

Andrew Sherratt agreed: “We’ve got to have somebody else to deal with data.”

Kevin Anderson: “Yes we can get specialists to cut the data, but first of all it’s about believing that the data is true, because there are just so many other systems piling in, they are all sharing information. Secondly I might want to know X,

07

but actually like all true marketeers, you might think ‘that’s great but what about Y and Z?’ So I want to do stuff with the data myself but you need a degree in software development to actually do anything with it.

“So the data is there but it’s about believing that data and then saying how to get what I really, really want and not from someone else who doesn’t really know what they are looking for.”

Chris Daly: “It’s that idea of forensic analysis.

Knowing the markets and knowing what is the right question to ask the data team? But I’ve also heard on occasion that some data teams won’t share the data with the marketing department, because it’s confidential. That’s the sort of disconnect we’re seeing.”

Caroline Theobald: “It’s incredible to think about the complexities that you all face in marketing. In this global age, does marketing have to find its place?”

Joe Chetcuti: “I think there’s an obsession with the complexity in marketing. To me marketing is simply giving people what they want and making them want what they’ve got - and most businesses sit somewhere on that scale.

“Data doesn’t bother me, it’s about insight. And you can get insight by sitting in a group of 25 people to do that, by having conversations with people and meeting customers. It might be that one customer gives us that inspiration we’re looking for.

“A lot of marketeers are really struggling with the idea of data and being at the cutting edge of things. But I think we should be moving back to basics. Who are your customers? What do they want? What have you got and how did you develop what you’ve got? That then >>

DEBATE

DEBATE But, he said: “My fear is that marketing will be lost in the noise of other people claiming that as their functionality. I would like marketing to establish a clear leadership role within organisations, and to be supported. It really involves integrating all marketing activity within the organisation.

“For example, if there is the possibility of interrogating all that big data coming in to get smart data, who has the specialist skills? Is it the CTO, the CIO or marketing? How do you do the measurements to steer product development?

And what are the KPIs [key performance indicators]? Is it just return on investment or return on engagement?”

“So, in the areas of integration, interrogation and impact, marketing needs to take the lead.

With the pace of change happening at the moment, we also need to create impactful communication and influence people’s behaviours. You see this in social marketing, such as governments spending money to stop obesity, smoking and drinking.”

Another concern Chris harbours is the widespread lack of appreciation of marketing as a profession and the specialist skills its practitioners require.

“If you had a chartered surveyor planning the structural support of a [company’s] building, noone would challenge him, but everyone seems to have a view on marketing campaigns.

“But we are not the ‘colouring-in’ department.

Actually marketing people are the price differentiator and that has a direct link to the profit margin. If you get it wrong it could cost you millions of pounds.

“So what we’re trying to do is create a better competitive advantage by meeting customer needs in a functional fashion. So how do we keep our heads when everyone else is trying to implement influence on us?

So what we’re trying to do is create a better competitive advantage by meeting customer needs in a functional fashion. So how do we keep our heads when everyone else is trying to implement influence on us?

06

“How do we maintain our powers and importance in terms of making businesses successful through true marketing?”

Returning to Kevin Anderson’s earlier point, Caroline Theobald asked audience members whether they thought forecasting how marketing might look in 2025 was looking too far into the future.

A few hands were raised in agreement with Kevin, including that of marketing consultant Sharon McCutcheon. She said: “I think it is too far away. I work with small businesses and, with the economic situation businesses are operating with, even five years is pretty difficult to predict. We’ve talked about possibly seeing people using six devices. But we might actually see a device which consolidates all the other devices, so it’s very hard trying to predict what’s going to happen.”

But Victoria Boldison, an international brand controller, said: “Looking further into the future will help us stay relevant and we can engage with analysts to help identify the technologies [of the future].”

Dave Pannell, of digital marketing firm The Design Mechanics, said: “I like the idea of looking 10 years ahead. If you look at what’s changed in the last 10 years it was mainly channels rather than marketing in general, and marketing is still marketing.” He added that the increasingly modular nature of marketing and its various manifestations would be a trend worth monitoring over the next 10 years.

Then Andrew Sherratt, principal at sales and marketing study centre SPA Professional Academy said: “I think 10 years is right if we’re looking at the big picture and if that’s what CIM is looking at to make sure the profession is in the right place. It does take that long – the evolution of an organisation does take a long time. If we just look at our own planning perspective for the next three to five years, we won’t be able to create the right role for marketing in organisations.”

Andrew Earnshaw of Up & Running Marketing said: “It depends who you are and where you are. For the CIM, I think it’s the right thing because it is the difference between being a leader or a follower. If you are a leader you’ve got to be looking 10 years in advance and you can pull the market towards that. You could influence the market if you’ve got strong

enough messages.”

Caroline Theobald: “Let’s also think about the value of marketers in a changing world - a world where there is a trust deficit and so much data. How can marketers optimise rather than be devalued by these factors?”

Aisha Khan: “There is a danger that marketing can be so widespread that actually we’re not valued as a profession. I think it’s really important to discuss that.”

Aisha explained how, in her previous role at YPO, her marketing department had touched seemingly every aspect of the organisation.

She added that she believes marketing sits at the core of communications and customer experience, whether or not that includes the digital space, but warned: “Marketing has a number of different disciplines [within it] but we need to be very clear what our remit is.

“The reason nobody questions other professions, like accountants or architects, is because it’s very clear what they do. We don’t have that distinction.”

Julian Rawel of marketing consultancy Market Echoes said: “The type of conversation we’re having this evening has been going on in marketing for years. I started out as an entrepreneur who got into marketing when we needed to hand out titles but it’s evolved over long period of time. And so for me, marketing and sales has been about understanding customers, understanding competition and delivering strategy.

“The problem marketing has is that most people outside marketing see marketing as being about marketing communications. And that’s why we often get moved down organisations.

Marketing has a number of different disciplines [within it] but we need to be very clear what our remit is They don’t see it as being strategic or see the marketeers as being the people who should be almost representing the customer and competitor in the boardroom. Until we are actually moving that way, I think we’re going to potentially keep going in this diminishing circle.”

Julian added: “Also, in terms of big data, one of the problems we face as marketeers is thinking that we’ve got to also be specialists in data technology. But we absolutely don’t, we’ve got to be specialists in getting other people to interpret the data on our behalf. We need tell them ‘this is what we need’ because we are representing the customers and the competition. But don’t ask us to necessarily understand how you get it, because our role must be to drive the interpretation.”

Andrew Sherratt agreed: “We’ve got to have somebody else to deal with data.”

Kevin Anderson: “Yes we can get specialists to cut the data, but first of all it’s about believing that the data is true, because there are just so many other systems piling in, they are all sharing information. Secondly I might want to know X,

07

but actually like all true marketeers, you might think ‘that’s great but what about Y and Z?’ So I want to do stuff with the data myself but you need a degree in software development to actually do anything with it.

“So the data is there but it’s about believing that data and then saying how to get what I really, really want and not from someone else who doesn’t really know what they are looking for.”

Chris Daly: “It’s that idea of forensic analysis.

Knowing the markets and knowing what is the right question to ask the data team? But I’ve also heard on occasion that some data teams won’t share the data with the marketing department, because it’s confidential. That’s the sort of disconnect we’re seeing.”

Caroline Theobald: “It’s incredible to think about the complexities that you all face in marketing. In this global age, does marketing have to find its place?”

Joe Chetcuti: “I think there’s an obsession with the complexity in marketing. To me marketing is simply giving people what they want and making them want what they’ve got - and most businesses sit somewhere on that scale.

“Data doesn’t bother me, it’s about insight. And you can get insight by sitting in a group of 25 people to do that, by having conversations with people and meeting customers. It might be that one customer gives us that inspiration we’re looking for.

“A lot of marketeers are really struggling with the idea of data and being at the cutting edge of things. But I think we should be moving back to basics. Who are your customers? What do they want? What have you got and how did you develop what you’ve got? That then >>

DEBATE

goes back to where the marketeers sit – which is at the heart of the company, in terms of strategy. We develop services, we develop products, we develop communication programs, talk to people, and if you’ve got six devices, that’s just media choice, that’s channels for marketing, it’s not really about the actual marketing function.

“We mentioned earlier about organisations not having their own marketers. For me that’s great because my company does have marketeers who are qualified in marketing.”

The decline of in-house official marketing functions in organisations does, however, mean that “we get terrible briefs and strategies,” Joe added. Audience member Dave Pannell: “But wouldn’t you say, if marketeers are having to fight for their place within a company, isn’t that their own fault? One big thing I believe in in marketing is accountability. But as marketing professionals we tend to keep ourselves one step away from the coalface, without necessarily being the ones talking to the client and delivering products – but I think that’s changing.”

Joe Chetcuti: “There’s a lack of role models.

There are no heroes in marketing. I run my own business and I can look at 20 people on TV in a week who run their own business and are considered heroes. There are architects who are knighted, there are entrepreneurs, doctors, scientists engineers, all feted. But I can’t think of any marketeers like that. Mostly you’ll find entrepreneurs who became marketeers, but very few people going the other way.

“So I think the CIM should be looking at making heroes of marketeers by finding out who those

DEBATE

So I think the CIM should be looking at making heroes of marketeers by finding out who those people are and positioning them in businesses’ minds. Showing them ‘this is what we could do for you’ people are and positioning them in businesses’ minds. Showing them ‘this is what we could do for you’. Show marketing to be entrepreneurial and exciting. I think that would go some way towards making people realise the value and accountability of marketing. We should all be heroes and it’s down to individuals like us to fight our corner for marketing and say to people ‘that’s not strategic, I’m not ordering golf balls, get someone else to do that’.

“We can’t rely on the CIM, however. We keep saying the CIM should be doing this and that, but it should actually be everybody in this room - marketeers – who should be doing this. We should be demonstrating that our business, department or team delivers returns on investment. We shouldn’t be waiting for the CIM to get the message out there.”

Aisha Khan: “I think the starting point for that is for people that have no experience of marketing who are just starting out, to get the right training and the right mentoring. “[Otherwise] you could be in a career for five years and not have had the training to talk about return on investment and other strategic

08

elements because actually you’ve just been brought in to ‘do the golf balls’ and eventually work your way up.

“I think as an industry we need to look at what qualifications are required for individuals that are coming through. Even now there will be many marketeers struggling to get qualified and progress with relevant experience, and there will be organisations that will just promote somebody from reception or admin and say ‘you can do the marketing because it requires a bit of everything’. I think the credibility aspect has to be there. But I think it starts from the bottom, it starts from when you are a marketing assistant working your way up. That’s where I see CIM playing a role in this.”

Caroline Theobald: “Students of marketing in the room, are you getting what you need?”

Audience member Nadine Henrich explained how experience and her CIM training had helped her command greater respect for marketing in the boardroom. But she admitted that it remains “a constant battle” to get people outside marketing to understand what it is and what it is supposed to achieve.

Liam Heywood, a marketing student at Huddersfield University, highlighted some of the challenges he has faced in gaining real world experience. “We’ve talked about there being no definition of what a marketer’s role is any more.

This year I’ve been looking for placements to do a year in industry. And how different companies categorise what a marketer’s role is, is quite bizarre. I have also been asked what area of marketing I want to go into but really at this point I can’t define myself because I feel like it can be a case of being a jack of all trades. When you’re looking at everything from branding, social media, email campaigns, market research and sales, and it seems all encompassing and a bit overwhelming. It’s quite strange to see how widespread people define marketing as. Is it sales or is it public relations in some cases? You are expected to have your finger in so many pies.”

Nicola Prior, a marketing and PR consultant, said: “I go into clients all the time and see receptionists being promoted to marketing.

These are ‘the marketing girls’ who are doing some of the downstream work.” She also pointed to the large number of talented women leaving the profession, preventing the creation of what was previously referred to as the ‘marketing heroes’.

“This is happening a lot but it doesn’t have to stay that way. It is something the CIPR [Chartered Institute of Public Relations] is experiencing and also it is happening in the legal and accounting sectors. Once you’ve got someone in their 20s in marketing, how are you going to keep them in the industry, learning, growing and taking a senior role? The drop-out rate among women going through their 30s

The drop-out rate among women going through their 30s and 40s is horrendous. People who are really talented by the time they’ve got to 30 are then leaving the treadmill and 40s is horrendous. People who are really talented by the time they’ve got to 30 are then leaving the treadmill.

“We’ve got to keep skilled women in the industry through their 30s and 40 so they can then become marketing directors and heroes.

But we are just losing so much talent and we can’t get to the top table if we have this attrition.”

Aisha Khan: “In the team that I currently manage, I only have one male and 19 females.

And the majority of women are in their 20s to 30s. As a female getting into marketing it is very, very difficult when you get to a certain point. The dropout rate comes through commitments to families and, at board level, there is very little representation of females.

09

It’s very difficult to get to that level. As female marketeers we need to do a lot more to raise our profile and this is something we as females need to take ownership of. I was shocked to find that I was the first female panelist at this series of debates [Leeds being the third leg of the national tour of debates before the CIM Hackathon].”

Caroline Theobald reminded Aisha and other delegates that “these events are about getting more people involved and taking more responsibility.”

Aisha Khan: “Also, the CIM is there as a vehicle or catalyst for us to move forward, but actually we have to take ownership of things ourselves.”

Caroline Theobald: “Are there any other burning issues that haven’t been covered yet?”

John Hartley of August Ltd added his opinion to the continual theme of the evening regarding marketing’s true definition and value within organisations. “My view is that the heart of marketing is anticipating and identifying customer needs. I certainly don’t pooh-pooh people who are in communications, which has been a bit of a theme tonight. I think they do a fantastic job and so long as you’ve got that in your head at whatever level that, as far as I’m concerned, marketing is identifying customer needs and then delivering them even better.”

John also identified a skills gap he is increasingly seeing among new talent coming into the industry.

“A marketing director said to me recently ‘I’ve just hired somebody with all the marketing qualifications and they weren’t very good’.

Why? Because they didn’t have the people >>

DEBATE

goes back to where the marketeers sit – which is at the heart of the company, in terms of strategy. We develop services, we develop products, we develop communication programs, talk to people, and if you’ve got six devices, that’s just media choice, that’s channels for marketing, it’s not really about the actual marketing function.

“We mentioned earlier about organisations not having their own marketers. For me that’s great because my company does have marketeers who are qualified in marketing.”

The decline of in-house official marketing functions in organisations does, however, mean that “we get terrible briefs and strategies,” Joe added. Audience member Dave Pannell: “But wouldn’t you say, if marketeers are having to fight for their place within a company, isn’t that their own fault? One big thing I believe in in marketing is accountability. But as marketing professionals we tend to keep ourselves one step away from the coalface, without necessarily being the ones talking to the client and delivering products – but I think that’s changing.”

Joe Chetcuti: “There’s a lack of role models.

There are no heroes in marketing. I run my own business and I can look at 20 people on TV in a week who run their own business and are considered heroes. There are architects who are knighted, there are entrepreneurs, doctors, scientists engineers, all feted. But I can’t think of any marketeers like that. Mostly you’ll find entrepreneurs who became marketeers, but very few people going the other way.

“So I think the CIM should be looking at making heroes of marketeers by finding out who those

DEBATE

So I think the CIM should be looking at making heroes of marketeers by finding out who those people are and positioning them in businesses’ minds. Showing them ‘this is what we could do for you’ people are and positioning them in businesses’ minds. Showing them ‘this is what we could do for you’. Show marketing to be entrepreneurial and exciting. I think that would go some way towards making people realise the value and accountability of marketing. We should all be heroes and it’s down to individuals like us to fight our corner for marketing and say to people ‘that’s not strategic, I’m not ordering golf balls, get someone else to do that’.

“We can’t rely on the CIM, however. We keep saying the CIM should be doing this and that, but it should actually be everybody in this room - marketeers – who should be doing this. We should be demonstrating that our business, department or team delivers returns on investment. We shouldn’t be waiting for the CIM to get the message out there.”

Aisha Khan: “I think the starting point for that is for people that have no experience of marketing who are just starting out, to get the right training and the right mentoring. “[Otherwise] you could be in a career for five years and not have had the training to talk about return on investment and other strategic

08

elements because actually you’ve just been brought in to ‘do the golf balls’ and eventually work your way up.

“I think as an industry we need to look at what qualifications are required for individuals that are coming through. Even now there will be many marketeers struggling to get qualified and progress with relevant experience, and there will be organisations that will just promote somebody from reception or admin and say ‘you can do the marketing because it requires a bit of everything’. I think the credibility aspect has to be there. But I think it starts from the bottom, it starts from when you are a marketing assistant working your way up. That’s where I see CIM playing a role in this.”

Caroline Theobald: “Students of marketing in the room, are you getting what you need?”

Audience member Nadine Henrich explained how experience and her CIM training had helped her command greater respect for marketing in the boardroom. But she admitted that it remains “a constant battle” to get people outside marketing to understand what it is and what it is supposed to achieve.

Liam Heywood, a marketing student at Huddersfield University, highlighted some of the challenges he has faced in gaining real world experience. “We’ve talked about there being no definition of what a marketer’s role is any more.

This year I’ve been looking for placements to do a year in industry. And how different companies categorise what a marketer’s role is, is quite bizarre. I have also been asked what area of marketing I want to go into but really at this point I can’t define myself because I feel like it can be a case of being a jack of all trades. When you’re looking at everything from branding, social media, email campaigns, market research and sales, and it seems all encompassing and a bit overwhelming. It’s quite strange to see how widespread people define marketing as. Is it sales or is it public relations in some cases? You are expected to have your finger in so many pies.”

Nicola Prior, a marketing and PR consultant, said: “I go into clients all the time and see receptionists being promoted to marketing.

These are ‘the marketing girls’ who are doing some of the downstream work.” She also pointed to the large number of talented women leaving the profession, preventing the creation of what was previously referred to as the ‘marketing heroes’.

“This is happening a lot but it doesn’t have to stay that way. It is something the CIPR [Chartered Institute of Public Relations] is experiencing and also it is happening in the legal and accounting sectors. Once you’ve got someone in their 20s in marketing, how are you going to keep them in the industry, learning, growing and taking a senior role? The drop-out rate among women going through their 30s

The drop-out rate among women going through their 30s and 40s is horrendous. People who are really talented by the time they’ve got to 30 are then leaving the treadmill and 40s is horrendous. People who are really talented by the time they’ve got to 30 are then leaving the treadmill.

“We’ve got to keep skilled women in the industry through their 30s and 40 so they can then become marketing directors and heroes.

But we are just losing so much talent and we can’t get to the top table if we have this attrition.”

Aisha Khan: “In the team that I currently manage, I only have one male and 19 females.

And the majority of women are in their 20s to 30s. As a female getting into marketing it is very, very difficult when you get to a certain point. The dropout rate comes through commitments to families and, at board level, there is very little representation of females.

09

It’s very difficult to get to that level. As female marketeers we need to do a lot more to raise our profile and this is something we as females need to take ownership of. I was shocked to find that I was the first female panelist at this series of debates [Leeds being the third leg of the national tour of debates before the CIM Hackathon].”

Caroline Theobald reminded Aisha and other delegates that “these events are about getting more people involved and taking more responsibility.”

Aisha Khan: “Also, the CIM is there as a vehicle or catalyst for us to move forward, but actually we have to take ownership of things ourselves.”

Caroline Theobald: “Are there any other burning issues that haven’t been covered yet?”

John Hartley of August Ltd added his opinion to the continual theme of the evening regarding marketing’s true definition and value within organisations. “My view is that the heart of marketing is anticipating and identifying customer needs. I certainly don’t pooh-pooh people who are in communications, which has been a bit of a theme tonight. I think they do a fantastic job and so long as you’ve got that in your head at whatever level that, as far as I’m concerned, marketing is identifying customer needs and then delivering them even better.”

John also identified a skills gap he is increasingly seeing among new talent coming into the industry.

“A marketing director said to me recently ‘I’ve just hired somebody with all the marketing qualifications and they weren’t very good’.

Why? Because they didn’t have the people >>

DEBATE

skills. They had no soft skills and as a result were a failure. And yet I bet most of us here would have hired them also. So soft skills is an issue that we need to think about.”

Addressing another of his concerns about the emerging role of the industry, John continued: “Companies are very good at gaining customers but have you ever been sold a product where something goes wrong? And how simple has it been to solve your problem? I’m telling you it is a nightmare. So I say the future of marketing must also link to the actual customer experience after the sale.

“So the soft skills and also focus on the customer experience are important issues because the good news is, if you actually solve a problem, customers think more of your product than they did before and the wow factor goes up.”

DEBATE

Jo Jackson of Leeds University Business School drew attention to another potential skills-related issue that could hinder the marketing industry in the future.

“I teach the next generation of marketeers and one thing that has become really obvious this year particularly for students going out into industry, is that they are being sucked into digital functions because they’re seen as digital natives. They are ending up being asked to do social media and a lot of them want to do a lot more of that, but an amazing amount of attention seems to focus on it. They don’t feel like they’re experts. They are experts at consuming social media, but not necessarily in producing it. And I think that’s slightly shortsighted of the industry, although it’s good to use their expertise, they themselves want to do a lot more in the industry than just the

10

social media.”

Audience member: “But aren’t they involved in the marketing strategy behind it?”

Jo Jackson: “I just think they are expected to be a part of social media because they are seen as experts and it’s such a big thing. One of the interns told me today that they don’t want to do social media, they want to do something different, but it’s difficult to find internships where the focus is completely different to that.”

Nadine Henrich: “There is this new need to have all this expertise on the digital level. We recently took a marketing intern and she loves all the social media part of the role, but we have to control a lot more of it now because she doesn’t fully understand how wrong that can go. But also, she wants to work in marketing, but she can’t talk. How can you be in marketing when you’ve forgotten how to talk to people?

It’s like forgetting to write. We are forgetting the basics. No matter how far we look ahead, whether that’s five years or 10 years, we have to remember how to talk and how to have a personal conversation. There are no phone numbers on websites, just Twitter and Facebook links, but sometimes you just want to pick up and call someone and talk, and I think that’s an element of marketing that we must not forget.

Face-to-face conversation is so valuable and you can’t replace that with a tweet.”

Sharon McCutcheon: “But sadly if you tweet something in terms of customer service you get a response straightaway, compared to over the phone.”

Aisha Khan: “I’ve seen quite a steep rise in recruitment for digital and social media executives, and I think the reason is that organisations themselves don’t understand what to do with social media. They know they have to do something so they think ‘actually let’s get graduates in and leave it to them, they know something about that stuff’.

“Often there is no strategy because the experts don’t exist in the organisation. And I’ve seen it so many times in an organisation where you’ve got digital executives sat on their own with no strategic direction and you get the agencies coming in telling them every now and then ‘just do this and that’. And these people are technically the face of the organisation because they’re conversing with the outside world. That’s happening more and more. Organisations feel that they need to do it rather than there being a real need for it.”

The recent experiences of Charlotte Fuller, a student at Huddersfield University, support Aisha’s observations.

She said: “I’m looking for placement at the moment and everything is tailored towards social media. I went into marketing because I wanted to work more towards the customer experience side of things. It’s something I find really interesting, and the chance to do that isn’t necessarily there to back that up. If the only avenue that we really have is social media then we need to be provided with the correct education related to the correct jobs.

“We are just expected to know how to do the Twitter feed and as millennials it’s in our remit.

Doing it so far for me has gone OK but it could have gone terribly wrong and I need to be

The whole point of learning as much as possible is to decide whether they want to be a specialist or a generalist. At any stage of a career it’s important to be exposed to as many things as possible conscious of that.”

With the debate nearing conclusion, Aisha Khan raised the issue of the need for more organisation-wide awareness of marketing strategy: “There are a lot of laws out there in terms of how to handle data, but I think we need more accountability from senior level and directors need to be more strategically aware.

We need to strategic marketeers represented at board to say ‘actually this is what we need to be doing. This is the strategy and this is what we need to be aware of’. There is a long way to go before we get to that.”

Joe Chetcuti: “We are saying that we don’t want our interns being so driven into social media and so on. And in some ways yes it’s wrong that they are just driven into one area, but actually if you think behind it, they are driven into that area because that’s the area they inhabit. If we want to therefore understand what they want, how they consume and how to satisfy their needs we have to therefore use them to strategically help in that process.”

Kevin Anderson: “When I was at that age [of an intern] what I desperately wanted was ownership, with a clear brief and understanding of brand guidelines. Often social media is done under very tight constraints and everything is proofread before it goes out, but over time the shackles will be relinquished and eventually they will actually feel that they own the social media activity – and that’s a great motivation, rather than just being given tidbits to do.

“Equally if I have somebody in my team who is unhappy to be only doing social media I would expect them to have the courage to come to speak to me and say ‘Kevin I’m also interested in this’.

“The whole point of learning as much as possible is to decide whether they want to be a specialist or a generalist. At any stage of a career

11

it’s important to be exposed to as many things as possible.”

Scott Jones, a marketing lecturer, said interns and established marketing professionals could fill their own digital skills shortfalls by tapping into Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC).

MOOCs offer large amounts of students the opportunity to study high quality courses online with universities, often at no cost.

“I got to grips with digital marketing with a MOOC and I just wondered is that the direction the CIM could take? It was three hours a week and was the most engaging learning I’ve done in year. I wondered if CIM could open up some of its networks that way.”

Andrew Batty, of Creative Marketing Services, ended the debate by challenging the CIM to better market itself. He suggested a clearer, simplified message from the organisation might better position it as a leader at the cutting edge of marketing. n

Key themes • Getting marketing strategy into the boardroom • Raising awareness of what real marketing is – dispelling old notions of ‘golf balls and marketing girls’ • Better optimising the value of big data • Keeping hold of soft skills like face-to- face communication • Adapting to global marketing needs (eg linguistics etc) • Getting more marketing women higher up organisations • Giving interns a better foundation for success • Clearer definition of the emerging roles within marketing

DEBATE

skills. They had no soft skills and as a result were a failure. And yet I bet most of us here would have hired them also. So soft skills is an issue that we need to think about.”

Addressing another of his concerns about the emerging role of the industry, John continued: “Companies are very good at gaining customers but have you ever been sold a product where something goes wrong? And how simple has it been to solve your problem? I’m telling you it is a nightmare. So I say the future of marketing must also link to the actual customer experience after the sale.

“So the soft skills and also focus on the customer experience are important issues because the good news is, if you actually solve a problem, customers think more of your product than they did before and the wow factor goes up.”

DEBATE

Jo Jackson of Leeds University Business School drew attention to another potential skills-related issue that could hinder the marketing industry in the future.

“I teach the next generation of marketeers and one thing that has become really obvious this year particularly for students going out into industry, is that they are being sucked into digital functions because they’re seen as digital natives. They are ending up being asked to do social media and a lot of them want to do a lot more of that, but an amazing amount of attention seems to focus on it. They don’t feel like they’re experts. They are experts at consuming social media, but not necessarily in producing it. And I think that’s slightly shortsighted of the industry, although it’s good to use their expertise, they themselves want to do a lot more in the industry than just the

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social media.”

Audience member: “But aren’t they involved in the marketing strategy behind it?”

Jo Jackson: “I just think they are expected to be a part of social media because they are seen as experts and it’s such a big thing. One of the interns told me today that they don’t want to do social media, they want to do something different, but it’s difficult to find internships where the focus is completely different to that.”

Nadine Henrich: “There is this new need to have all this expertise on the digital level. We recently took a marketing intern and she loves all the social media part of the role, but we have to control a lot more of it now because she doesn’t fully understand how wrong that can go. But also, she wants to work in marketing, but she can’t talk. How can you be in marketing when you’ve forgotten how to talk to people?

It’s like forgetting to write. We are forgetting the basics. No matter how far we look ahead, whether that’s five years or 10 years, we have to remember how to talk and how to have a personal conversation. There are no phone numbers on websites, just Twitter and Facebook links, but sometimes you just want to pick up and call someone and talk, and I think that’s an element of marketing that we must not forget.

Face-to-face conversation is so valuable and you can’t replace that with a tweet.”

Sharon McCutcheon: “But sadly if you tweet something in terms of customer service you get a response straightaway, compared to over the phone.”

Aisha Khan: “I’ve seen quite a steep rise in recruitment for digital and social media executives, and I think the reason is that organisations themselves don’t understand what to do with social media. They know they have to do something so they think ‘actually let’s get graduates in and leave it to them, they know something about that stuff’.

“Often there is no strategy because the experts don’t exist in the organisation. And I’ve seen it so many times in an organisation where you’ve got digital executives sat on their own with no strategic direction and you get the agencies coming in telling them every now and then ‘just do this and that’. And these people are technically the face of the organisation because they’re conversing with the outside world. That’s happening more and more. Organisations feel that they need to do it rather than there being a real need for it.”

The recent experiences of Charlotte Fuller, a student at Huddersfield University, support Aisha’s observations.

She said: “I’m looking for placement at the moment and everything is tailored towards social media. I went into marketing because I wanted to work more towards the customer experience side of things. It’s something I find really interesting, and the chance to do that isn’t necessarily there to back that up. If the only avenue that we really have is social media then we need to be provided with the correct education related to the correct jobs.

“We are just expected to know how to do the Twitter feed and as millennials it’s in our remit.

Doing it so far for me has gone OK but it could have gone terribly wrong and I need to be

The whole point of learning as much as possible is to decide whether they want to be a specialist or a generalist. At any stage of a career it’s important to be exposed to as many things as possible conscious of that.”

With the debate nearing conclusion, Aisha Khan raised the issue of the need for more organisation-wide awareness of marketing strategy: “There are a lot of laws out there in terms of how to handle data, but I think we need more accountability from senior level and directors need to be more strategically aware.

We need to strategic marketeers represented at board to say ‘actually this is what we need to be doing. This is the strategy and this is what we need to be aware of’. There is a long way to go before we get to that.”

Joe Chetcuti: “We are saying that we don’t want our interns being so driven into social media and so on. And in some ways yes it’s wrong that they are just driven into one area, but actually if you think behind it, they are driven into that area because that’s the area they inhabit. If we want to therefore understand what they want, how they consume and how to satisfy their needs we have to therefore use them to strategically help in that process.”

Kevin Anderson: “When I was at that age [of an intern] what I desperately wanted was ownership, with a clear brief and understanding of brand guidelines. Often social media is done under very tight constraints and everything is proofread before it goes out, but over time the shackles will be relinquished and eventually they will actually feel that they own the social media activity – and that’s a great motivation, rather than just being given tidbits to do.

“Equally if I have somebody in my team who is unhappy to be only doing social media I would expect them to have the courage to come to speak to me and say ‘Kevin I’m also interested in this’.

“The whole point of learning as much as possible is to decide whether they want to be a specialist or a generalist. At any stage of a career

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it’s important to be exposed to as many things as possible.”

Scott Jones, a marketing lecturer, said interns and established marketing professionals could fill their own digital skills shortfalls by tapping into Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC).

MOOCs offer large amounts of students the opportunity to study high quality courses online with universities, often at no cost.

“I got to grips with digital marketing with a MOOC and I just wondered is that the direction the CIM could take? It was three hours a week and was the most engaging learning I’ve done in year. I wondered if CIM could open up some of its networks that way.”

Andrew Batty, of Creative Marketing Services, ended the debate by challenging the CIM to better market itself. He suggested a clearer, simplified message from the organisation might better position it as a leader at the cutting edge of marketing. n

Key themes • Getting marketing strategy into the boardroom • Raising awareness of what real marketing is – dispelling old notions of ‘golf balls and marketing girls’ • Better optimising the value of big data • Keeping hold of soft skills like face-to- face communication • Adapting to global marketing needs (eg linguistics etc) • Getting more marketing women higher up organisations • Giving interns a better foundation for success • Clearer definition of the emerging roles within marketing

So what does that mean in terms of how we communicate with our customers? I think there are three reasons why customers are feeling quite reluctant to share their data: Not trusting an organisation enough, not seeing the value that they are getting from an organisation by sharing their data and the fact that they just can’t be bothered because the process takes too long.

cim.co.uk