On course to climb high up career ladder

25 February 2010 | By Steve Hemsley

The promise of an upturn in advertising spending this year is prompting brands to look closely at the training needs of their marketers. While money has been tight for the past couple of years, Advertising Association (AA) data now forecasts that ad spend will increase by 2.8% in the third quarter. If this happens, it will be the first rise since early 2008.

Gary Payne, marketing development manager UK and Ireland at 3M - the company behind brands such as Post-it and Scotchgard - admits his brand’s training priorities in 2009 focused almost entirely on good housekeeping and maximising the profitability of its many products.
Payne says training will be vital in 2010 if his team is to respond proactively to the challenges ahead. “Last year, we went back to good, disciplined marketing with lots of in-house training along with profit and loss analysis of all our brands,” he says. “We must now get on the front foot. This means knowing more about our competitors, looking for gaps in the market and having capable marketers who use consumer insight to help us hold and then gain market share.”

He believes investment in training boosts a marketer’s confidence. This is particularly important now, he says, because most of his team have never had to market products in a recession. Even with the economy improving, they still need extra skills to help them succeed in this testing environment.

Although in-house training has grown in popularity during the downturn as clients and agencies have tapped into their internal expertise, officially recognised industry training is also coming back into fashion.

Alistair Daly, marketing director at On the Beach Holidays and formerly at Lastminute.com, says he will be sending more staff on digital CRM courses run by the Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM).

“The training budget is still tight but is up 30% this year,” says Daly. “Our staff need to go on courses where we will see a return on investment, and on external sessions, they meet people from other brands and learn best practice.”

The IDM says the number of people on its data analysis courses has doubled as marketers demand more information about their customers.

Furthermore, the Institute cites increased interest in its Continuing Professional Development scheme as evidence that more people are self-funding their marketing training. The IDM says there has also been a rise in demand for places on its Absolute Essentials of Direct and Digital Marketing course, particularly among more senior executives.

Jan Gooding, marketing operations director at insurance group Aviva, says it is difficult to get marketers to take more than two days out of the office to attend training courses. Like many companies, it is experimenting with virtual classrooms to complement face-to-face sessions.

As for course content, Gooding says the focus is on core skills. “Our marketers need to be able to interpret customer needs, develop clear strategies and profitable proposals and then communicate them in a compelling way,” she says.

While the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) suffered a 24% dip in its learning and development business in the 12 months to June 2009, CIM director of research and professional development David Thorp says there has been an improvement since Christmas, with interest from clients in February the highest for 12 months.

He accepts that time and convenience are two big issues, which has led the CIM to introduce more online content and virtual classrooms for its qualification courses. Thorp adds that there is also more demand for one-day workshops.

“In a recession, organisations tend to focus on the survival of the business rather than the staff, but we are coming out of that now,” says Thorp. “Brands and agencies need to remember that as confidence returns, training will be a powerful weapon in the battle to retain staff.”

One agency doubling its training budget to more than £70,000 this year is RPM. Managing director Dom Robertson says keeping hold of his best people is a priority, so training is now more closely linked to an individual’s professional development plan. RPM has appointed a senior team to create and implement its agency training programme, which Robertson has called The RPM Academy - which will involve internal and external courses.

RPM’s training in 2010 will also reflect how it is expanding away from its roots as an experiential agency to include more campaign planning - a shift that is being driven by its clients.

Suzanne Barnes, head of professional development at the Marketing Communications Consultants Association (MCCA), is certain staff retention is a major reason for an increase in interest in training.

The MCCA is running 14 intensive training courses, up from ten last year, ranging from Excellence in Account Management to Excellence in Account Planning and Presenting for Creatives.

“Agencies tell us what they want and we respond,” says Barnes. “We are also seeing the return of the bespoke course for agencies. There was none last year but by February we had already organised six.”

One marketing discipline to perform better than some others during the recession was market research, and Market Research Society (MRS) deputy director-general Deborah Harding says the number of people sitting the MRS Advanced Certificate - a core graduate training qualification - is at a record level.

She expects applications to remain high in 2010, as large suppliers which outsource their research services or use overseas offices want to know they are employing qualified and knowledgeable people.

“Qualifications are vital to this process as they enable benchmarking of staff,” says Harding. “This approach also gives employers greater flexibility because they can draw on global staff resources and apply them to the areas of the business where the demand is.”

She adds that businesses must invest in up-skilling after culling senior management jobs. “Most of the training enquiries we receive come from people aged under 35 and those who need to expand their capabilities into new areas.”

There also appears to be renewed optimism among specialist training suppliers. Brand Learning runs the Brand Learning Academy, a modular programme covering brand building, strategic planning and innovation. Co-founder Mhairi McEwan says training enquiries have increased since

September. “Organisations spent last year taking costs out of business, but they have now got to secure growth,” she says. “Further cost cutting is inevitable but organisations must look at top-line growth too. They need marketers well trained in insight, innovation and pricing to attract customers again. Training last year was more about strategic planning.”

McEwan says marketers who have lost their jobs in FMCG marketing teams are popping up in sectors less damaged by the downturn, such as oil and gas, insurance and pharmaceuticals. “Marketing is starting to be recognised in these areas, with talented people showing how marketing can drive growth,” she says.

Meanwhile, Fraser McLeay, professor of strategic marketing at Newcastle Business School, believes marketing’s higher profile within professional industries will continue this year. “Scientists, lawyers, engineers and accountants are realising that training in marketing improves their career prospects,” he says. “Professionals are retraining and seeking formal qualifications in marketing and in doing so are developing an understanding of how new and existing customers can be tapped into and new products and services developed.”

At Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, head of marketing Dr Ruth Ashford says marketers are also appreciating more how training can benefit their own future employability. “The demand is certainly for training in skills relating to digital and being able to fight the corner for marketing from a financial standpoint,” she says.

“More people will choose digital marketing as a route to employability. Many are looking at the new part-time CAM digital marketing awards, the new CIM Chartered Postgraduate Diploma and the Professional Diploma.”
The university is also helping marketing agencies to write tenders and develop a closer relationship with their clients’ procurement departments.

The need for training never goes away, whatever the economic climate. As organisations that slimmed down in the recession need to start growing again, learning and development for their marketers is climbing back up the corporate agenda.