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By Karen Roper and Alan Lambert February 1998 Marketer Articles
Introduction
As with December's Marketer, this month's issue is once again brought to you by our guest co-editors: Karen Roper of Strategic Solutions and Alan Lambert of The Atropos Project, both based in Bellevue, WA. Both are seasoned marketers in the A/E/C community, each with more than 15 years devoted to firms in the Midwest and/or on the West Coast. Their introductory notes for this issue of the Marketer follow.
December's Marketer-focusing on high-performance organizations-pretty much set the stage for this issue on "The Future of Marketing." In December, we explored some ideas about the new worldwide economic order and how leaders in the A/E/C environmental industry will operate. The nature of change in our industry will be driven by these world-class performers and their smaller, technologically sophisticated, niche-player cousins, but the changes will affect all A/E/C and environmental firms. Some of what we can expect includes:
- The very nature of what A/E/C and environmental firms do will change-along with where they will do it and with whom. There will be more convergence between design and construction processes, shorter delivery cycles, different tools and teaming structures, broader entrepreneurial links among service providers, and a global market base.
- Client relationships will be shaped around one-to-one enterprise models. We will have fewer clients, but the relationships with our primary partners will be more durable and long term through electronic connections, interactive "client-community" links, digitally based work processes, and fundamentally client-centered organizational cultures.
- Worker/employer arrangements will be more fluid and focused. Project teams will be assembled from in- and out-of-house forces; independent contract workers will supplement in-house payrolled workers; and how we recruit and keep star performers will be our primary "marketing" challenge in the next millennium.
While we can speculate on where these industry trends will lead, the bigger question here is: How will these trends affect the role of marketers? Is there even going to be a role-at least in terms of what marketers have traditionally done? To what extent will marketers move away from their traditional trappings and move into organizational development? How many of us are going to become contract workers rather than payrolled workers-and is this a good thing?
Fortunately, as editors, we simply ask the questions, then find folks who have answers they are willing to express in writing. But, as we told you in December, contradictions abound in the new world order, and both parts of a contradiction can remain true.
When we asked if the marketer's traditional role will change in the new millennium, Jerry Yudelson in "Marketing Futures: The Dynamic World Ahead" replied: "Marketing will still be a skill set and a mental activity that focuses on effective, persuasive communication…." Julie Olson, in "Marketing Apologetics," agrees these skills will remain viable, but not by themselves: "Traditional skills that were sufficient five years ago are now marginal."
And, as you know: They're both correct.
Yudelson cogently highlights seven key driving trends that are shaping our industry and then argues that, while the "context" of what the business development marketer does is changing at a furious pace, the marketer's core skills remain crucial. Only now a marketer has a primary obligation to keep abreast of change itself and be able to articulate how a company can anticipate, adapt, and innovate long before these "future shock" tidal waves hit.
Olson has a somewhat different perspective shaped by a more client-centered approach to marketing and service delivery. Her "apologetics" draws on an ancient theological tradition which says that, before you can expect others to understand your beliefs, you must first understand their beliefs. So it is with clients if we want them to work with us: "We must first convince them that we hear and understand their concerns." To apply apologetics effectively, Olson argues that marketers need to apply a higher set of skills that speak to an organization's capacity to make decisions which resonate with its long-term viability and client relationships.
In much the same way that marketers need to be good at what they have always done while expanding their capacities for change, so too do organizations that intend to be leaders and innovators for the new world. Karen Roper and Alan Lambert see organizational innovation emerging through a company's "Commitment to Education."
They connect the educational process to expanding skills and personal competencies in operational processes, as well as to research and development that leads to innovation within the company's core operations tied directly to its client relationships. The role that marketers take in creating "learning organizations" of this caliber will move them further into organizational development-an area for which they, more than most in this industry, are uniquely gifted.
In some cases, marketers will turn to outside specialists for help; in other cases, according to Alan Lambert in "The Jobless Marketer," they will become those specialists. Lambert discusses the growing trend among marketers to become independent contractors (or consultants) which, he suggests, may be part of a larger societal shift towards "a jobless culture." However, Lambert's point is that developing a contractor's "mindset" is what secures a marketer's future-whether you remain payrolled or actually become a contractor.
So… can you be a master of what you have always done in a completely different world, reshape yourself and your organization around a model of "apologetics" and the educational principles of a "learning organization"-all the while adopting an independent contractor's mindset? More importantly: Can you afford not to?