“In Marketing, the first thing you market is yourself”

A small article has appeared in a newspaper praising Marketing people for their commercial acumen and leadership potential. I cut the article out, scanned it, and attached it to an e-mail, sending it to the Directors, all senior managers, field sales and internal sales. I have enlarged a copy and put it up on one of the screens in the Marketing section.

When I did the post-grad course at Watford College, the Marketing module had various guest speakers from marketing agencies in London (some of them quite famous names in the business world). One of the speakers, acknowledging the war that rages between Sales departments and Marketing departments (not to mention the war that rages between Finance departments and Marketing departments) told us bluntly: “In Marketing, the first thing you market is yourself.” Is this sort of self-promotion honourable I wonder?

The sales staff rave over a book called The Art Of Sales by Gary Gagliardi based on The Art Of War by the ancient Chinese master strategist Sun Tzu. It has chapters such as “Going to war”, “Planning an attack” and “Using spies”. They even read Gagliardi's blog each day (www.clearbridge.com/blog/blog.htm).