While marketing has been the driver of technological and scientific innovation, the actual discipline of marketing has remained reactive. It’s time for marketers to take the lead in advancing the marketing discipline.
A history of reactive actions
Industry pundits and academics are catalysts who advance the discipline. They recognize trends and provide perspectives and insight. Corporations consume this information and apply it to new marketing opportunities for the business. Business leaders address the opportunity by issuing job requisitions that create new titles and job requirements. As the industry adopts these new titles, they become standards.
One recent example of this is the Social Media Manager. When social media emerged as an imperative for business, the task of managing social required more focus, instead of giving each employee responsibility for social media management, business leaders decided the task required a singular focus. Then slowly, the role of Social Media Manager became a standard.
Another important example of marketing evolution is the rise of the startup ecosystem. Innovation has become so difficult in large corporate environments. Startups have emerged as a way to identify new innovations without assuming the risks of research and development. As a limited investor in a startup, corporations can explore new innovations and minimize risk by sharing it with other investors. A brilliant strategy, but it ignores the potential power that marketing can have in identifying the best innovations, thereby reducing risk.
It’s time to do more
The evolution of the marketing discipline is essential, and previous trends in the industry, like the rise of the Social Media Manager and ceding innovation to the start-up ecosystem, have been beneficial, but more is needed. The next phase of economic growth is emerging, and the requirements point to a nuanced and complex ecosystem. This economic shift is an opportunity for marketing professionals to step up and evolve the profession intentionally.
Transformation is a big job. Each of us has a role in building a better marketing profession.
At EOP Media, we explored the history of the profession, and we have a few Big Ideas.
Explore our perspectives.
Register for a Big Ideas Workshop.
