Marketing – friend or foe?

Marketing - Friend or Foe

Fans of 2012 and W1A will remember Perfect Curve, a parody of marketing & PR agencies. And who could forget Siobhan Sharpe’s continual and unintentional one liners.

“If we get bandwidth on this…you’ve got maple syrup on your waffle from the get go.”
Siobhan Sharpe, Perfect Curve, W1A

For those of us in marketing we watched with mirth, hiding our face, peeking through our fingers. We all know a Siobhan and whilst on TV she is funny and likeable in reality our “Siobhan’s” keep us all firmly in the “fluffy” box.

Marketing in reality is no longer fluffy. How can it be when the majority of us are some of the most proficient Excel experts in any organisation? Diligently working through CPL and ROI calculations to achieve that utopia of a twelve month 1:1 return, minimum?

I have seen the role of marketing change in the last 15 years and I am proud of those changes. Many roles within companies rely on a strong single minded approach and a talent in a specific area. Marketing however requires more of a blend, ask any company who has recruited a Marketer what they were looking for, someone creative or someone analytical, they will say both. We are numbers people with a creative flair or creative people who are passionate about delivering cost effective revenue and sales. Not an easy balance to strike but we do it time and time again.

So I come back to the original question, is Marketing your friend or your foe? Of course as a Marketer I am going to say friend but it is true. We are able to be both creative and analytical what more could you ask for to help drive a company forward? However a word of warning watch out for the Siobhan Sharpe’s, they do exist but are thankfully easy to spot. Simply utter the word Excel or return on investment and they are likely to collapse into a heap of unintelligible blurb.

“Ok. Here’s the thing. Ok? The thing is… Ok. Here’s the thing with this. Ok. The thing is.”
Siobhan Sharpe, Perfect Curve, W1A

Find out how Marketing has and continues to change, read The Changing Face of Marketing