Marketing has traditionally seen itself as a communication function. Let someone make the product or the service, there is a sales function to sell the product and marketing would do something in between. As organizations grow leaner yet complex, global yet agile enough to be local, networked yet silo-ed, Marketing is being called upon to perform some totally new functions. With the advent of digital marketing and that taking center stage, substantive marketing energy has got liberated. And with this have come in new expectations from Marketing.
- Thinking of the business in it’s entirety: Businesses are getting complex. Real time, a number of cross currents occur at businesses. New markets, competitors, regulations and technology emerge every day. Literally. Marketing is looked upon as an aggregator of the knowledge and answer one questions – What does this mean to our business? Marketing has access to the tools to access information and be able to relay that to the parts of the businesses with an impact analysis an very importantly – what do we need to do?
- Be the Chief Synthesizing Officer: Companies need to think more like theater actors – who have to perform every day. Not once a week. Every act, actor and performance is as good as the last one. Marketing will increasing be called upon to direct every show of the play. And play the key role in the play as well.
- The Change Accelerator: Very few parts of organization have regular interfaces with the external world. Be the voice of the world inside the organization and be a change agent. The need for urgency, the new trends, brewing competition, growing segments, new aspirations amongst consumers are things that most people in organizations are privy too. Internal processes and dynamics are just too complex for people to have energy for external happenings. Be the rain maker in the organizations.
