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Has anyone else ever wondered why the average digital marketer is... not great at digital marketing? Like, why is the talent pool still so different to consultancy or investment banking, given the ever-rising importance of marketing? Couple of thoughts below... (1/n)
Naturally some of this is a pipeline issue. Anyone studying a quantitative subject at university is going to prioritise careers in finance over marketing, even though marketing nowadays can make just as much use of their quantitative skills. (2/n)
Part of the reason I think students de-prioritise marketing as a career is this self-perpetuating cycle where they've never seen people they look up to go into marketing, so they don't go themselves. (3/n)
I think students at top-tier universities doing quantitative courses likely also see marketing as purely vocational (something to put food on the table), and don't appreciate any of the academic elements to it. Admittedly there are fewer than in finance, but they are there (4/n)
When you get into a marketing role, another issue is that leadership rarely do marketing themselves, and so are less able to train up younger recruits. An MD at an investment bank still has far more operational knowledge than a CMO at a brand (5/n)
Agencies are great for sharing and cultivating knowledge, but the fast pace of them and pressure to deliver can spit people out of the profession before they've had a chance to really explore it (6/n)
There's a whole chunk of marketers, dreaming of passive income, who've come to the profession through gurus and youtube courses. This tends to bring the average skill level down and dilute the talent pool, in a way that doesn't happen in e.g. finance (7/n)
I think it's a shame that marketing doesn't have it's own Wolf of Wall Street. Sure, watching that might get people into finance for the wrong reasons, but it gets people interested in a way that marketing as a career path fails to. (8/n)
