According to a new study from IPSOS, only 35% of marketers in the US, UK and Australia would pass (score 7/10 or more) on a 10 question assessment of foundational marketing knowledge. The study, created in collaboration with Mark Ritson, founder of the increasingly eponymous MiniMBA certification, shines a light on the skills issue facing marketing. It implies that an era of ‘vibe marketing’ has left marketers unable to grasp basic theory or hold a conversation at the top table of business leadership.
Does it have a valid point? Or are we seeing an example of self-interest bending a valid observation into a flawed conclusion?
Marketing Does Have a Knowledge Issue
Discounting the study’s potentially self serving implications, in which the hammer factory bemoans the lack of hammer fluency, as good advertising for a miniMBA – it has a point. Marketing has a flawed knowledge base. We often don’t speak the same language. We’re swayed by novel ideas over time tested concepts and empirically proven conclusions. The answer however, isn’t as simple as a certification. As someone who’s proudly enjoyed an undergraduate degree in marketing, a master’s degree in marketing communications and read far too many dissertations – I don’t think education alone solves this. It has a part to play, but it misses the benefit that marketing gains its strength from new ideas and, to a degree that still needs serious improvement, new talent.
To think a degree alone magically transforms marketing into medicine, physics or chemistry is simply false advertising for marketing degrees. It creates acolytes for a way of thinking, but without a shared language beyond graduates – it doesn’t move the industry forward. It runs the risk of creating the dogmatic predisposition that can hold more structured fields of intellectual endeavor back, making us resistant to new ideas or diverse perspectives because of what we were ‘taught’, without more widely giving us any of the benefits.
Certifications Are Part of the Solution, But Not All of the Solution
Instead, a marketing education is just one part of the actual solution needed by the industry: a greater shared knowledge base – open to all. An understanding of the concepts, not just the acronyms, that empower good marketing. An evolving but proven, foundational base to build upon. A degree alone doesn’t make marketing more like medicine, a shared agreement on our version of anatomy does that. Teaching it is one aspect, but without it, you’re simply being taught one sub-dialect of a larger language, based on the preferences and perspective of an educator, often independent from oversight. Your newfound understanding is firewalled by the educator’s natural need to sell their system. Psychology would look very different if handbooks like the ICD or DSM-V were only given out to certain schools or programs.
Modern education builds upon these standard knowledge bases, not the other way around. Without a standard set of ideas, new marketing certifications just sound like old MBAs without the nice campus – promising even less advantage than their predecessors while offering budget elitism and LinkedIn badges.
Beware People Selling Lifeboat Commentary In Floods
As the idea of AI shakes the marketing industry, people are afraid for their jobs and certifications are facing a wave of opportunity from that fear. However, we can’t conflate valid industry criticism with someone selling life boats, no matter how attractive.
If we want to fix marketing’s knowledge gap, we need to democratise a shared understanding through industry action and shared standards designed to be widely used, not purchased.
