David Thorp, director of research and information at the Chartered Institute of Marketing, tells ePolitix.com about why marketing matters.

Question: Is marketing vital to businesses today?

David Thorp: Marketing is so vital to business today because most businesses are operating in competitive markets that are by and large oversupplied – that’s locally, nationally and internationally – and marketing is the management discipline that enables organisations to succeed in that environment.

That’s not just profit year by year, but actually to build a sustainable position in these markets.

Question: Is marketing taken seriously enough in most organisations?

David Thorp: Yes - A recent survey by The Chartered Institute of Marketing found that nearly two thirds of all marketers say that marketing is a high priority for their organisation. However, among the smallest organisations, i.e. those turning over less than £1m, this figure rises to around 80 per cent.

Small organisations are often ‘sharper’ businesses, who are much closer to their customers. They appreciate the importance of understanding the needs and wants of those who keep them in business. Yet this is vital to the multi-national giant as well as the corner shop. Recognising what customers want and providing it most effectively is essential to all businesses, and this is really the essence of marketing.

Question: The London Olympics are coming up. When should businesses start thinking about their Olympic marketing strategy, and what should they be focusing on?

David Thorp: Marketing is judged to have been a key contributor to London’s success in being chosen as host of the 2012 Games, so businesses and UK plc should take note of that.

Looking behind that process, we saw that the process involved assessing the competition, better understanding the people who were going to be making the judgement, and getting the proposition for London that really won out when they weren’t favourites by any means.

So that’s something that should get people thinking as it was marketing that played a really important part there.

Businesses should be thinking about their Olympic strategies now. There will be change in the competitive environment as a result of the Games which brings with it both opportunities and threats.

A Chartered Institute of Marketing survey conducted this Spring found that a third or all businesses are likely to undertake some sort of marketing activity linked to the Games, which is a significant number of organisations.

The 2012 Games are approaching fast, and businesses who do wish to become involved need to make plans now. The legislation surrounding commercial use of the Games logo and other Games related material will be particularly stringent.

Organisations who do wish to carry out any marketing connected with the games should check the London Olympic Games Organising Committee guidelines to ensure that their plans comply with the law.  

Question: With 2012 in mind, what do you think the future of marketing will be?

David Thorp: On the future of marketing, to borrow an advertising line from a very strong marketing organisation, 'we think the future of marketing is bright' because of the situation where organisations are going to need strong marketing to compete as things get more competitive.

What they should be thinking of in particular is two things.

The first is that marketing is going to need to be better engaging with the consumer.

The old methods and models of just promoting products through advertising or just sending out direct mail to consumers are being cut off as routes to the consumer because there are more channels to the market and we can see that effect with advertising revenues dropping for TV programmes, for example.

We also see that route being cut off because consumers are more able to exempt themselves from telephone calls or mail. The future of marketing is therefore going to be about being more engaging and offering clear value at every step of the way rather than just pushing products.

The second thing is that we have always had to promote benefits to consumers as a reason to buy a product.

Those benefits, we know, are not just about rational benefits, it’s about emotional benefits like how does this product make me feel about myself and how do other people see me with this product, but we’ve added an ethical dimension to that as well.

That’s not just a 'nice to have'. We can see organisations like BP, a lot of organisations really, embracing corporate social responsibility and those sorts of aspects, so we can expect those aspects being woven into the marketing package in the future. 

Social responsibility was an issue talked about years ago but you will now see most of the major companies have a clear corporate social responsibility policy as part of their strategy.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing studies show that about a third of all marketers believe that a company’s sustainability practices affect customers buying decisions. This means that ‘being green’ is not an option for many organisations, but central to their future success. 

Question: What steps are The Chartered Institute of Marketing taking to effect these changes and what steps does the government need to take?

David Thorp: We want, and this is one of our key purposes, to see a good appreciation amongst the broader range of companies, and particularly the government, of the real value of marketing to organisations.

It’s not posters and T-shirts. Marketing is a strategic management discipline.

Marketing does contribute to profitability, but most of all it contributes to creating a sustainable organisation.

It’s particularly these aspects like CSR in which we believe marketers are best able to guide organisations as to how best to succeed in situations where consumers are demanding that their organisations are responsible.

What we are doing is promoting this message that marketing is about helping an organisation create a sustainable advantage as well as a profit.

Our studies show that marketing is a fast-moving profession, and in our recent survey, only a quarter of all marketers thought that our profession would be much the same as it is today in five years time. Technological change is believed to be the key driver of this change.

However, around three quarters of marketers believe that technologies that help marketing departments obtain and store customer information are moving ahead of the marketers’ understanding of the ethical and moral dilemmas that they can create. This is clearly a concern, and we feel that it is important to help marketers equip themselves with the skills and knowledge they need to deal with these issues.

Question: Why does it make sense to have marketers guide an organisation in terms of what the community expects from them?

David Thorp: Well, that’s really our skill set.

It’s about bringing into the organisation the customer perspective: the insights both of where there are today and what they could be persuaded to want in the future.

What we’d like to see from the government is an assessment on the importance of marketing to the success of UK plc.

We think it has been some time since an objective study on the strength that professional marketing contributes to UK plc has been completed and, in the not too distant future, we would like to see this happen along the lines of the Cox Review on Creativity in Business.