The Future of Marketing: An Open Letter to Students and Teachers

by Jacqui Canney and Alex Jutkowitz

Before we can ask “What makes a marketer?” we have to ask: “What is marketing?”

It is one of the beauties of our profession that there are as many answers to that last question as there are marketers. But here are some principles most of us would likely agree on.

Marketing is a blend of brand creation and brand guardianship. It must always connect what it does to revenue growth, while also keeping an eye on how that affects a company’s reputation. The best marketers serve their stakeholders by going out into the world and coming back with intelligence about how business and culture are changing. And when they are invited into the process, marketers have an incredible amount to contribute to the development of new products and the opening up of new markets around the world. 

How do you prepare students to enter a profession that demands such a diversity of thought and action?

The temptation is to focus exclusively on concrete skills, in these days especially an understanding of technology like artificial intelligence and analytics. Another temptation is to take any of the functions above and focus on them to the exclusion of the test. To take either approach is to do a disservice to students and to the companies they will eventually work for.

Because marketers must be integrated thinkers, they deserve an integrated education.

Concrete skills are important, but you will learn them the minute you hit your first assignment, we guarantee it. And in an age when the culture can change in a week and technology by the day, the context for a skill is as important as the skill itself. We guarantee you will not be fully prepared for your first day on any job. And that’s as it should be. All the worthiest challenges have learning and development built into them. We say: If it doesn’t contain an element of personal growth it will be unlikely to drive organizational growth.

Marketing, whatever the data mavens will tell you, is not an exact science. Aspects of the job can be exacting, but paramount for marketers it the ability to select, from hundreds of alternatives, what is likely to be the most effective move. 

One of the greatest champions of marketing, and perhaps even the greatest marketer of the 20th Century, Steve Jobs, made marketers an integral part of the product design process when he kicked off Apple’s renaissance in the 2000s. By integrating marketing at the start of the product development process, he insured that the company created not only beautiful devices but ones that weren’t too far ahead of their time. It was the cultural awareness of his marketing that insured Apple’s products were irresistible, and that his company would go on to become the most valuable on earth. 

Take our NextGen Leaders Program that we developed at WPP, a ten-week crash course taught by some of our brightest leaders -- and a way of open-sourcing WPP's collective strategy.

Relevance depends on forging a creative culture that’s vibrant and that has a stake in the future. If I’m speaking for WPP, we’ve got seasoned talent and legendary brands in advertising, marketing, and communications. But you are the missing element.

Let’s create the future of our profession together.