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Why marketing needs a new name
25 Nov 2003
Whether we like it or not, the term 'marketing' has come to mean 'promotion' at best and, at worst, T-shirts and coppers off. Much of the world of non-marketers sees the marketing community as "untouchable, unaccountable, expensive and slippery".*
A recent advertisement in the colour supplement of The Sunday Times referred to a product range as "Success, or marketing trickery".
Such are the depths to which we have sunk as a so-called professional discipline.
There is little point in reiterating where marketing as a function has come from during the past fifty years. Suffice to say that even marketing's own professional institutes seem incapable of recognizing that practitioners are not the same as professionals - that gallant band of people who study the syllabus, sit the professional examinations and then qualify through practice and continuous professional development.
The author recently successfully proposed a debate motion for the Worshipful Company of Marketors that marketing died in the last century, an achievement that he is not particularly proud of. However, during the same debate, the author proposed that, somewhat in the same way that distribution became logistics, then supply chain management, ending up firmly on board agendas, so marketing should be lifted from the tactical to the strategic level, where it has always been in long-term successful companies. Figure 1 below shows clearly that marketing operates at two levels, in accordance with the author's definition.
Marketing needs a new name to reposition itself clearly in the boardroom and away from promotion. 'Demand Chain Management', 'Strategic Market Management', or, at the very least, 'Strategic Marketing' would fill the bill.
Marketing is a process for:
But it is clear that old marketing, i.e. what marketing has become after fifty years of abuse, is dead and the new marketing, i.e. that crucial part of corporate strategy that determines target markets, differential offers and their role in creating sustainable shareholder value added, is about to enter centre stage.
Any organisation that fails to recognize this will fail in the twenty-first century.
* For the research database leading to these findings, please contact Professor Malcolm McDonald at Cranfield School of Management.
About Malcolm McDonald
Professor Malcolm McDonald, until recently, Professor of Marketing and Deputy Director Cranfield School of Management with special responsibility for E-Business, is Chairman of six companies and spends much of his time working with the operating boards of the world's biggest multinational companies, such as IBM, Xerox, BP and the like, in most countries in the world, including Japan, USA, Europe, South America, ASEAN and Australasia. He has written thirty eight books, including the best seller "Marketing Plans; how to prepare them; how to use them" and many of his papers have been published. Professor Malcolm McDonald will be giving a series of three one-day classes: • Strategic Marketing Planning • Competitive Marketing Strategy • Key Account Management. 16 to 18 February 2004, Balalaika Hotel, Sandton. SBS Conferences: (021) 914-2888, www.sbs.co.za/wcm2004.
