The hue and cry has been that marketing will become irrelevant as marketers know the word of mouth and organic marketing is more effective and what marketers try to do is to start a conversation . What pundits are saying is there are now more efficient means to start that conversation than mass media .
Empirical evidence , however seems to go contrary to that assertion . Not too long ago we were told to prepare for the demise of newspapers , magazines and books since digital platforms hade made it possible to access the same information at a fraction of the cost .
Newsweek even ceased print publication in 2012 and retained the digital version of the magazine but it was not long before the print version was re-launched in 2014 . Newspapers , magazines and books have not disappeared , all what happened is we got a new online channel for them .
There are those that like to read their publications online and there are those that need to feel the hard item in their hands and it is not true that the young prefer being online it is usually determined by where one is and how much information they need or whether they are just passing time .
We had seen the same phenomenon in the radio industry when we were preparing to bury the medium and then FM transmission was introduced and the medium took off as the most popular and cost effective medium locally .
We have also noted that those making the assertions are also likely to be narrowing the marketing profession to promotion . True , the promotion part of marketing has been hit hard and agencies in particular are reeling . But is this another case of the subset becoming the whole ?
If you were to go into agencies at the moment you will find them delving into social media metrics , content marketing and worried about SEOs . They are on the lookout for creative talent that is tech-savvy to be able to tap into new opportunities .
This tells you that the agencies are responding to the market needs but the agencies have not closed the traditional services which mean they are still on demand and still being offered . The ad
So the profession that is under condemnation seems to have confounded the doomsayers , it has not died , as professed , but has morphed and molded itself around a new paradigm and instead of a funeral we may be at the cusp of a glorious rebirth .
agency does not look too different from what it looked like before .
So where are the prophets of doom for the marketing profession getting their ammunition from or could it be that since America is starting to have hiccups in the marketing profession due to changing environment we have assumed ‘ as it happens in America so it shall happen here ’.
In our investigations we did however come across some worrying trends in the marketing profession and these may be of more concern regarding the future of marketing than the hypothetical ones that are being driven from outside the country .
The first and the most serious is the current tendencies in a lot of companies to have non marketing qualified people holding marketing positions . They may be marketing engineering , agricultural or pharmaceutical products or services but they have no formal marketing qualifications .
They are not quacks in the true sense of the word in that they are knowledgeable in their field but they are not schooled in the marketing craft and techniques . The fact that they wear the marketing officer ’ s hat without accreditation , so to speak , waters down the profession .
Then there are the real quacks who have done a certificate or been a merchandiser in a supermarket promotion and are now passing themselves off as marketers . The ability of any person to practice without formal qualification is the real danger to the profession .
The second problem arises with the marketing professionals who cease to hone their craft and keep up with the trends . These lazy marketers are happy to have gotten their degrees and diplomas and that is the last time they looked at a marketing text book or read a marketing magazine .
These are the ones that make their CEOs squirm in discomfort since they have yesterday ’ s solutions to today ’ s problems . These are quasi professionals who gave rise to the dictum that ‘ a person who went to school and does not read is no better than the person who never went to school at all ’
The third is the fact that our marketing education , especially at the tertiary level has not kept pace with the local reality and we are still training our people on outdated curriculum that does not often reflect the reality on the ground .
There are also many briefcase operators that purport to be experts in marketing training and they have been abetted by corruption and the absence of barriers to entry for nonprofessionals . The need for accreditation for training outfits has never been greater .
To us this may be the real reason that marketing may be at crossroads and the solution to that may be for the marketers to lobby for protection against quacks and that begins by all professionals signing up to membership in professional societies .
Next would be for the marketers to ask the government to regulate the profession and protect consumers from those are bent on tarnishing the name of the profession by practicing without the necessary qualifications .
The time to act is now when we have a good number of marketing professionals as CEOs and this is the time to have them give back to the profession by forming a formidable lobby to seek the changes that we want to see in the profession .
We believe that the only reason the jury is still out on whether marketing is on its deathbed or not is because the profession is so central to business that it is sometimes confusing who is marketing . Our position is that Marketing is here to stay and all we just need to do is get it out from under the radar .