Marketing: Not an Insular Job

Don Schultz’s May 15, 2007 column in Marketing News focuses on marketers’ new job description. As our field continues to evolve in a fast-changing economy, we need to better:

  • Understand our markets, including finding the best ways to segment and/or aggregate markets
  • Develop and deliver customer-focused brand value propositions
  • Monitor our effectiveness in actually delivering on the brand promise.

Inherent in our ability to deliver the brand promise is the need to get buy-in and support from everyone in the organization that impacts brand value. Don clarifies: “… marketing is something the organization does, not what the marketing department does.”

As a result, the new marketing manager’s responsibility goes beyond managing the marketing department to work “horizontally across the company to involve operations, finance, sales, HR and all the other groups that cumulatively create and provide the customer’s brand experience.”

Internal collaboration is critical to marketing’s effectiveness. If you only view it as “other duties as assigned” on a marketer’s job description, don’t bother to apply.

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