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Wednesday 29 June 2011

Marketing Live 2011 at London's Olympia -a 2 Day Masters in Practical Marketing

Like at the ancient palace of Knossos ( Labyrinth) Crete, with its 1,300 rooms, visitors entering the Marketing Live 2011 exhibition via a multi-coloured bull run are drawn into the centre of this modern day ' bullring ' within the Grand hall at London’s Olympia Exhibition centre in order to visit the 400+ stands on show.

As in the people depicted on the famous frescoes of Knossos most visitors to the show were young or seemingly ageless adults, with few elders present!

The most famous fresco from Knossos is the 'Toreador Fresco'. It was painted around 1550–1450 BCE. It depicts an athlete grasping the bull by its horns and vaulting over the animal's back.

The bull whose horns modern marketers have to grab today is the respect of CEOs.

One of the recent running debates in Marketing Week magazine has been


“Are marketers too innumerate to lead a company?!”


As with many other business professions such as Professional Selling, Professional Procurement, HRD, Learning and Development, Marketing goes through periods of self-doubt and victim status from time to time.

Currently they feel unloved and undervalued by the board or ‘C’ suite level.

Despite one hundred years of the CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing) and its great work in qualifications etc. - further progress is still to be made it seems, to build the marketing profession’s self-esteem (beyond itself as many non marketers perhaps somewhat unfairly perceive them) in their self serving promotion and headlining industry award ceremonies.

Boards want :
  • hard data numbers,
  • accurate forecasting and
  • return of investment metrics.


Waffle about brand values and equity rather than results such as revenue, EBITA (earnings before interest taxes and amortisation expenses) and market value are nearer to what CEOs are looking for.

Mark Choueke, editor of Marketing Week magazine, opening up the Marketing Live 2011 show.

Mark pointed out it had been tough last year for Marketing. Tough externally- tough on consumers- tough on you guys ( the audience at the centre stage 1st session)

A report recently claimed that 73% of CEOs thought Marketing professionals lacked credibility. There was a feeling in the survey that marketers focused too much on latest trends such as Social Media when such trends it appears to them generate more business for the company.

Last year’s report from the CIM and Deloitte showed 49% of companies are not using a customer or marketing measure to inform decision making at board room level. Much is due to how Marketing presents what it measures to the board in a meaningful way for the 'C' level to take and make its decisions..

To see how the Marketing industry is grabbing this particular bull by the horns I visited the Marketing live 2011 show.

Marketing Week magazine claims its show( according to the pull out section of this week’s issue ) ,is be a two day master class in brand management rather than aimless promenade from stand to stand.
Paul MacDonald , Portfolio Director of Centaur media organisers of Marketing Week live 2011.

This year’s show is split between four sections.

1. Data marketing show featured technologies to improve business performance,
2. In-store Show presented cost effective solutions to improve in-store sales,
3. Insight show offered better understanding of consumer behaviour and business performance improvement
and 4.the on-line section offered help to visiting marketers in making sense of and leveraging digital marketing.

I've just attended a brilliant presentation by Syl Saller of Diageo which I will write up shortly on the blog.

The Hall is buzzing crammed with 21st Century Theseus learning to slay 'minoterean' CEOs' belief of their "innumerate" marketers!!!

If you are in London over today or tomorrow 29th June come along. It's a blast

www.marketingweek.co.uk

1 comment:

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    ReplyDelete