Why your marketing fails – and always will if you employ these ill-informed bozos

 A quick short-cut to bankruptcy: what are marketing diplomas worth if they don’t remind people what the objective is?

33 years ago I started running the U.K.’s first ever residential course in direct marketing for the Chartered Institute of Marketing – the CIM – in Cookham.

Cookham is a picture-book village beside the Thames. There was a great Indian restaurant and a damn good pub just a walk away from  the CIM’s  splendid campus. I liked the people at the CIM, love teaching and enjoyed getting away from my office.

But after two years I jacked it in, because unfortunately the CIM was criminally unaware of the purpose of marketing – to sell places on the course. This is hard  if – as in their case – they did nothing that I could detect to promote the course save list it in their brochure.

I said they were relying on Marketing by Osmosis

Maybe they are better now, but I have never, ever in all the many interviews I have conducted asked any applicant if they had a marketing diploma.

A friend who interviews people for marketing jobs recently told me about a typical experience. The applicant, asked how a particular campaign had gone, said it got over 100,000 click-throughs.

What about conversions or sales? He had no idea.

I asked my friend, “Did he have a marketing diploma?”

“Yes”.

“Do most of the people you interview have them?”

“Yes”.

“Do any of them measure sales?”

“No”.

If those who run these damn courses don’t remind people every day what the purpose of marketing is they are not worth a damn.

Hire people who have had to get results. That’s all that matters.

About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

1 Comments

  1. Frank Wehrmann

    I’ve only been working at the communications craft for 35 or so years now Mr. B., and so far my experience with International, National, Regional and Local clients (here in Canada and the U.S.) is the same as yours: the vast majority of clients don’t make any practical attempts to connect Operations, Marketing, Advertising, and Sales. Where I see dominoes that stand or fall together, they see independent departmental silos that are loosely connected with monthly metric memos.
    Sadly the majority of Ad Agency practitioners compliment their myopic views. For example I work with many who think and “integrated media campaign” is made up of a website + social with organic and PPC feeds.

    Keep on writing + fighting the good fight.
    Frank Wehrmann
    Counter Culture Communications

    Reply

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