The marketing discipline is one which allows an individual to think tapping into their cognitive and creative space of their brains, using imaginary cells through the process of thinking and bringing their virtual thinking alive through many forms like animation, 3D, audio visual, info graphic etc.
This is a space where well executed campaigns can convert leads into sales, call to action, subscriptions and the likes, however most employers, companies and C-suite look at it through the gimmicks lens and conclude that all we do is to put a logo on a T-shirt, a coffee mug, a pen and a cap and thus tend not to inject enough cash investment to the department, no state of the art resources, some companies don’t even a simple white boards to allow flow of ideas for marketers, which is a sad reality.
Marketing can be applied everywhere and it is not necessarily fixed on a certain industry, I mean you can excel in a financial industry as the marketing executive and then leave and achieve similar success in the logistics industry in the same position, its all in the mind and how much you tap in your creative juices and how much you apply your ‘outside the box’ thinking and virtual ideas.
It saddens my heart today to see the recruiting managers looking for marketing professionals and being strict on the type of industry the applicant comes from or should come from before being shortlisted, how much time they spent there, what did they achieve there?
If the environment was not conducive or the ground is or was not fertile enough due the nature or the structure of the business or even lack of autonomy for marketers they would not have achieved much where they come from which might be the reason why they are in the market in the first place.
You find a bank looking for a head of marketing and insisting that the applicant should come from the banking industry if not at least from the FSP, what for? A telco giant looking for a creative marketing manager and insist on poaching from their rival? A media agency insisting on an applicant (creative director) coming from another agency?
This behaviour and attitude inhibits creativity, please tell me how many ground breaking ideas are you going to get out of someone who is already accustomed to the norm (this is how the industry does things)? You need someone who is going to look at the problem or the idea or the campaign from the consumer’s or user’s point of view without having to refer back to their previous employer or the past campaigns they have worked on because that’s when the ‘recycled ideas’ mentality sets in.
Marketing is quite a flexible discipline, it very much differs from the more rigid disciplines such as engineering, safety and security, mining, medicine where the necessary industry experience is a must.
Please employ marketing professionals and give them the tools, the freedom, the fertile ground to breed ground breaking ideas and most importantly to have FUN while working.
