Episode 95: marketing’s vanity problem
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Looking Outside is for curious people looking for a fresh take on familiar topics, in business and beyond.
When a profession brags about its ability to operate without formal training, you know you have a vanity problem. Founder of the MiniMBA, marketing professor and not-actually-that-angry columnist Mark Ritson joins the Looking Outside podcast to reiterate the central role of marketing in business – to understand the other. Marketers today have a branding problem, making it about themselves, the glitz and the awards, and Mark says this is all imposter syndrome stemming from lack of formal training. Empathy is foundational to marketing and is so needed in organizations distracted with short term priorities and obsessed with a narrative of constant change. And it can be a powerful unlocker of transformative ideas (like saving abandoned dogs).
To look outside, Mark goes back to the foundations of market orientation - observing real consumers with curiosity, recognizing he may be wrong and that their behavior cues their true needs and not his ego. His humility is also kept in check with family and friends who have no interest in how ‘important’ he is.
Mark is a marketing professor with a PhD and 25 years teaching at institutions including London Business School, MIT, the University of Minnesota and Melbourne Business School, where his MBA courses won multiple awards. He has worked as a global brand consultant for companies from Louis Vuitton and Dom Pérignon to Subaru, Shiseido and Johnson & Johnson, and spent thirteen years as the in‑house brand consultant for LVMH.
A long‑time columnist and seven‑time PPA Columnist of the Year, his writing has appeared in Marketing Week, AdWeek, The Drum, Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review and leading academic journals.
He is Founder of the MiniMBA in Marketing and Brand Management, now taken by tens of thousands of marketers worldwide. (Including the host of this podcast, class of September 2024.)
More on Mark:
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Learn more about Mark www.marketingritson.com & read his Adweek columns
Learn more about the MiniMBA
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