Marketing should be setting the agenda - Rod Gillies

Marketing must lead the conversation – both within our organisations, and within broader society. The solutions to some of the biggest problems we face often lie in better communication and changing people’s behaviour – for me, the core elements of what marketing is all about.

Only by grasping what’s really going on, and what people really believe or think, can we have a hope of effectively changing their behaviour.

If we’ve learned anything during the pandemic, it’s surely the value and importance of tightly-honed messages repeated over time to change behaviour. During Covid, we’ve seen brilliant examples of where this approach, executed well, has genuinely saved lives. But we’ve also seen muddled messaging and clunky slogans which could have undoubtedly benefited from a good marketer’s touch.

“I think we’ve all had enough of experts, haven’t we?” – the rallying cry of the Champions of Common Sense. Even more so when people assume there isn’t any genuine depth to a topic in which someone can be an expert. Marketing can be an easy target for accusations of being style over substance, simple to depict as little more than the flashy froth on the oat-milk cappuccino of capitalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Good marketing offers a toolbox for thinking differently about our world and understanding how it really works.

The trouble with common sense is it misses the counterintuitive insight, doesn’t understand people’s behaviour and decision-making processes are rarely logical and can often be downright irrational and self-destructive. Influencing people’s behaviour requires expertise and empathy. Good marketing is built on insight – on understanding people’s underlying beliefs, needs, desires, and fears. And then it develops effective ways to nudge those beliefs, to tap into those needs, to salve those fears – to create messaging which works.

But the best marketing is about so much more than messaging. It’s the most frustrating thing for marketers – the wider impression out there that marketing practitioners are simply “the poster monkeys” (as a salesperson once referred to me back in my assistant brand manager days). Yes, marketing communications are important, but they’re not the whole of the discipline, not by a long chalk. Marketing is a verb, not a noun – and advertising and messaging are simply the outputs from what should be a robust and structured thinking process.

Effective marketing is founded on an evidence-based understanding of people – insight which clearly articulates what people really do, versus what you might think they do, or what they might say they do. Marketers see the world as it really is, not as senior figures – be they executives or politicians – might want it to be. Only by grasping what’s really going on, and what people really believe or think, can we have a hope of effectively changing their behaviour – whether that’s about nudging them towards healthier or more sustainable lifestyles, shifting attitudes on social justice issues, or creating a stronger preference so our brand wins more often on the supermarket shelf.

Marketers should be leading the conversations at the highest levels of our organisations, playing an integral part in big strategic decisions. This isn’t just about us having a louder voice in those discussions – it’s about us having a clearer, more persuasive one. We are responsible for the marketing of marketing itself – putting understanding of people at the heart of both strategy and tactics, and convincing our colleagues from other disciplines that good marketing doesn’t just cost money, it adds genuine value.

Whatever our organisations’ objectives – from selling widgets through to fundraising, or changing attitudes and behaviour around health, social justice, or the climate crisis – marketers should be setting the agenda around who to talk to, how best to reach them, what we want them to hear, and the behaviour we’re trying to change. Everything we do in The Marketing Society in Scotland aims to better equip our members to set that agenda.

Rod Gilles, Head of Innovation & Incubation at Whyte & Mackay, Chair of The Marketing Society Scotland