UCT Business School to inject new life into marketing

According to course director Gordon Cook, School Navigator at the Vega Brand Communications School, marketing is often the first to get the chop when the economy tightens, and the discipline needs to reverse its decline in status in recent years if it is to avert this and move back up the value chain.

“There is a growing concern that marketing has become too operational - focusing too much on planning and not enough on strategy,” said Cook.

“Marketers need to spend more time thinking strategically about their discipline and the value it can bring to their company. This may seem obvious, but in practice much of most marketers' time and energy is spent managing day-to-day operations and activities such as drawing up budgets. Many marketers aim for incremental progress year-on-year, when in fact they should be looking to revolutionise their marketing strategies on an annual basis.

“These are some of the reasons why marketing departments at companies globally are losing their power as one of the key strategic drivers of business growth and face cut-backs,” he said.

The Strategic Marketing for Thinkers course at the UCT GSB aims to tackle these challenges through a hands-on investigation of the components and processes of competitive and sustainable strategy development.

It is aimed at all senior level managers - particularly CEOs, product and brand managers, marketing and advertising managers, account managers and sales managers.

Cook maintains that delegates can expect to develop their strategic thinking and leadership capabilities, while at the same time rejuvenating their creative abilities on the programme.

“For decades the ‘four Ps' framework (product, price, place and promotion), or marketing mix as it is also known, has dominated the way marketing is thought about, taught and practiced,” says Cook. “While useful, its dominance has led to a certain amount of complacency within the discipline - and a fresh strategic approach is needed if marketers are to move their practice back to centre stage.

“Marketing should be inventive, provocative and strategically driven. It should be a force for innovation within organisations.”

Cook's approach is also set to challenge marketers to take their knowledge of their target markets to new levels.

“Marketers need to be wary of basing their strategies on too broad an assessment of their target market. Consumer groupings are often based on demographics and earning power and these are not enough to tell us who the people really are and what makes them tick,” he said.

“In South Africa the diversity of the population means marketers need to be particularly thorough in their assessments.

“One, for example, often hears the term ‘youth market' used amongst local businesses. In reality this age group is hugely varied and made up of people from different religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, not to mention the differences in spending power, education and interests. The bottom line for marketers is, in such a diverse environment, it is critical to adopt a mindset of curiosity and genuine interest in their target markets,” explained Cook.

Strategic Marketing for Thinkers runs from 21 - 23 October 2008 and is being offered by the UCT GSB Executive Education unit, which has a global top ten rating in 2005 and 2006 from the Economist Intelligence Unit, and in 2007 was listed by the International University Consortium for Executive Education (UNICON) - the leading global body for the advancement of executive education - as one of six leading business school innovators.