Marketing is rarely given the prominence in an organisation which it should have and one wonders why more CEO’s are not from a marketing background. Every brand within the marketing function is a business in its own right and collectively they are the business.

Marketing should be driving corporate strategy. It is the marketing function which should be in tune with all elements of the internal organisation, capital expenditure limitations, production capabilities, resources (both man power and financial). Externally marketing should be forecasting current and future trends, be fully aware of the competition and its possible future plans and be determining the future planning and diversification of the business.

All too often marketing is seen as developing brands and creating activities both consumer and trade – but this is not enough. Marketing needs to determine where existing products fit into the future of the organisation and forecast potential new markets which the company can work towards. As a consequence marketing must work with production in forecasting future needs and capital expenditure requirements. Marketing must be the king pin of the organisation but this relies on skilled marketers with solid training and experience. Sadly this is often not the case.

To hold all of these balls in the air at once is a real skill and needs good training from an experienced marketer. Sadly marketers are now split into so many fragmented functions; brand marketing, channel marketing, category marketing etc., that they do not have the overall business skills required to do the job that marketing should do. Major companies are failing because of the lack of solid marketers and this will only continue until organisations start to train and develop their greatest asset – people.