Author: Josh Jennings
Date: 09/09/2006
Publication: The Age
Section: My Career
Page: 17
 
 
A strategic approach is missing from marketing, writes Josh Jennings.

STRATEGIC skills are becoming a rare asset in marketing departments, and organisations are devoting little time or resources to strategic planning. These are the findings from a survey by Nine Dots Marketing: 86 per cent of the managers surveyed said improving marketing skills was important but only 14 per cent had completed individual training plans for their staff in the past year. Only 31 per cent of marketing executives said the necessary marketing courses had been implemented.

Nine Dots marketing director Zeynep Roberts says companies are undervaluing the long-term benefits of strategic marketing planning. "With the graduates that are coming out of university, there is probably less emphasis on developing core commerce and core learning in the strategy area," she says.

Ms Roberts, who also lectures on marketing strategy at Macquarie University in Sydney, says the trend is for companies to create positions that are more refined, with employees responsible for one particular area of marketing such as communication, product development or media. As a result, marketing skills are becoming narrower.

There is less training in organisations and many big companies that once provided training have changed. "Some have gone offshore with their head office and others are taking on fewer graduates."

But companies can overcome these obstacles. Ms Roberts suggests a stronger link between marketing and other promotions departments. "The promotions departments are not exposed to the overall business decisions and how marketing can facilitate some of those business decision-making processes," she says.

"From a customer perspective and a market perspective, marketing managers and staff should play a critical role. In a lot of cases, marketing is the department you go to after you develop your strategies, so they can do the execution, the promotion, the brochures and so on. I think more people in marketing can be more involved in the central decision-making and more vocal in the direction of the business. That has to come to the surface a lot more, in terms of giving them the opportunity to be business managers and not just promotional managers."

Nine Dots Marketing outlines three broad marketing skills: task-oriented, plan-focused and strategic. People with task-oriented skills have narrowly defined roles. Their activities are driven by daily tasks and their focus is on the short-term, without a holistic view of an organisation. Plan-focused skills are used by marketers who may consider an organisation's future in terms of a 12-18-month plan.

But those with strategic marketing skills have a much broader perspective. They understand that their decisions are going to be valuable to the future of an organisation.

Ms Roberts says some organisations consider strategic planning to be very important, and that many companies are working to be better strategic planners. But a changing focus across marketing departments is proving detrimental.

"Being close to the external elements of the business, such as the customer, was the focal element of marketing, but it no longer is," she says. "That deterioration of the role of marketing in a lot of organisations will have long-term ramifications because it will become more and more difficult for them to have a true market orientation approach to how they do business."

Ms Roberts says universities are slow to change with regard to playing a role in changing management cultures. Financial pressure is also having an impact on the nature of marketing courses. "That pressure does sometimes force universities to take short-cuts in some of their courses. Once upon a time, a marketing graduate might have gone through more of a business discipline and done an all-round business management degree. But now the focus is much more towards the vocational element than the holistic aspect, even though educating students to become business managers or economists or something like that will give them a broader understanding of the issues."