Can you be a marketing expert without a formal qualification?
We should reject the idea that a smart marketer must have studied marketing, writes Zenith’s Richard Shotton
Marketing professor and columnist Mark Ritson was recently irritated by a tweet he came across which suggested 24 marketers (pictured) were worth following on twitter.
Responding to the fact that only four studied marketing, Ritson said, in a typically witty article:
“If someone sent me a list of 24 leading experts in brain surgery or physiotherapy or seventeenth century romantic fiction I would expect most, probably all, of the names on the list to have a formal education in the subject in question. Why not marketing?”
But is it true? Must you have a “qualification to be qualified”? I don’t think so. Here’s why.
Many routes to success
First, because it prioritises theory over practice. The key determinant of marketing capability is the results. How you get there is secondary. Surely, all brands would prefer a successful employee with a background in say, Philosophy and Ancient History (as Stephen King, founder of account planning, studied) to a cack-handed one, who happened to be trained in marketing.
To reject success because it doesn’t spring from correct theory leads to the ludicrous situation relayed by legendary BMP account planner, Paul Feldwick (MA in English):
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“I remember a few years ago giving a lecture at a seminar in Istanbul, at which there was present a formidable lady, the doyenne of the Turkish advertising research industry. As part of my talk I presented some case histories from the IPA awards, including a campaign for…Strepsils.
When it came to question time, this woman put her hand up. Looking fiercely at me, she said with total conviction, “It is not possible that this campaign was successful. The commercial contains no consumer benefit”.
It mattered not to her that I had shown robust, IPA approved evidence for sales effects. It did not fit her theory and therefore could not work.”
Ritson’s response to this blasé attitude is to wonder if we’d be so relaxed if we were visiting a doctor without qualifications. But what’s true for one category isn’t necessarily true for another. After all, surgeons require a steady hand. As a bloke who rarely goes a day without knocking something over, I hope agencies don’t start making co-ordination mandatory.
Second, it’s a limited view of learning. Do we really only acquire knowledge in formal settings? If so you’d be better placed asking an alumnus of Birmingham City University’s MA in social media about Facebook than Mark Zuckerberg (who didn’t finish his degree in Psychology and Computer Science).
Finally, it doesn’t fit the facts. Consider some of the most interesting marketing thinkers and practitioners. Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Rory Sutherland, Jeremy Bullmore, Dave Trott. Not a marketing degree among them.
The cynics among you might be thinking I just selected people to fit my argument. Better then to look at those Ritson’s terms the “great marketing thinkers”. The ones that he lectures on in his seminar on brand equity: Aaker, Godin, Ogilvy and Achenbaum. According to Wikipedia just one studied marketing.
Of course, this isn’t to say that a marketing degree isn’t useful. But we should reject the absolutism that a smart marketer must have studied marketing.
Richard Shotton (BA in Geography) is head of insight at Zenith – follow him on Twitter: @rshotton