There is one professional discipline that seeps into every single corner of 21st century life whether we want it to or not. Without it, we would not be in a position to make fully informed decisions about what we do, where we go, how we spend our money, what we eat for dinner or watch on TV, or put in our supermarket trolleys.
That discipline is marketing.
While it may be considered a separate discipline in a business or organisation executed as a way of communicating with an audience, marketing is, in reality, the fundamental core of every commercial and non-commercial enterprise. Without marketing, there would be no customers.
Yet marketing is not taught in schools. Marketing is not set alongside maths, history, geography and science. If you take Business Studies in school, it sits there as one of the topics that are introduced. However, its absolute fundamental importance to business is not recognised or acknowledged.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of students considering their post-school options consider Business and Marketing as a university option without any real understanding of what it entails, or if they decide to enter the job market they are faced with adverts for marketing jobs without really understanding what they involve.
The definition of marketing
The AMA American Marketing Association officially defines marketing as follows:
“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large.”
It goes on to further clarify and define marketing research:
“Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and the public to the marketer through information – information used to identify and define opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate actions; monitor performance; and improve understanding of it as a process. It specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyses the results, and communicates the findings and their implications.”
How marketing is so much more than its definition
Reading through these definitions, you get a better sense that marketing is so much more than simply advertising – rather, marketing requires a deeper understanding of human nature, what drives our thoughts and behaviours, and how businesses are poised to understand these trends in populations and create products and services that can best serve, teach and support them.
This is relevant not just for commercial businesses, but for every establishment in modern life – governments, schools, charities, military institutions…
Which begs the question, for something that is so fundamentally relevant to every area of our lives, why is it not taught as a discipline in schools from a much earlier age?
Why marketing should be taught from a young age
Leaving school at the age of 18 and entering the job market, millions of potentially brilliant marketers are not even aware of the range and diversity of marketing jobs that are available. How many people who work in marketing do you know who just happened to ‘fall’ into it by accident? Rather they tend to enter a business through one route and end up working their way up through the marketing department by chance. Consider how richer their knowledge base would be if they had been taught basic marketing from an earlier age.
Equally, consider the hundreds of thousands of people who leave school and set up their own businesses, often in the trades such as plumbing, electrics, building and so forth. Would it not be more beneficial for them to be taught practical aspects of marketing which would help them run and grow successful businesses?
