In many organisations marketers are simply not seen as potential CEO material. If that is the case, then what are we doing wrong as marketing educators?

Marketers are often among the most able, innovative, and dynamic people in an organization, much closer to the customer than others in the business. Marketers are skilled communicators, capable of connecting with customers and presenting images and ideas that resonate with their desires.

And yet, as marketing educators we have been guilty of focusing these people’s attention excessively on the downstream element of their role: communicating a firm’s offerings to its customers in the most effective and efficient way. This is obviously important but we also need to help them realize the potential they have to offer upstream: guiding the creation of new and ever better offers to fulfill unsatisfied needs.

When we tackle the question of the value that marketing brings to an organization, we still tend to focus on narrow downstream issues such as the ROI on tactical marketing activities rather than asking whether an investment upstream might have yielded much better result.

This has lead to an obsession with the size of downstream marketing activity which has spread to the financial community. Investors now see an increase in the ratio of marketing investments as a percentage of sales is seen as a key indicator of potential for sustainable profitable growth. This ratio is indeed often used by financial analysts as a key driver in their evaluation models.

I would argue that this conventional wisdom is absolutely wrong. Indeed, in the language of logic, the connection is “invalid”. Not only is marketing much more than spending money, but the very idea that the ratio of marketing expenditures over sales is an indicator of future profitable growth assumes that all marketing is equal. It is not, and the better marketing is, the fewer resources it needs to deliver the same results. By not challenging this concentration on quantity regardless of quality we are effectively encouraging sub-standard, shoddy and spend-thrift marketing and wasting the talents of some of the most energetic and creative people in business.

If, like me you passionately believe that marketers have more to offer their organisation than improvements in prompted and unprompted brand awareness, and temporary sales surges on the back of extravagant ad campaigns, then join the TME Academy, and help change the way marketing is taught.