Marketing department or marketing?

Q:
Which one is more important, the marketing department or marketing?

A:
A marketing orientation and a marketing department are not necessarily synonymous,and the marketing director from the Trust Me School of Marketing, who uses his superior knowledge of the dark arts to justify an army of staff and an inexorably rising budget, should be treated with the utmost suspicion - if not summarily dismissed.

Satisfying customer needs profitably remains the overriding purpose of marketing. But as businesses have become more service-oriented, the role of marketing has changed from being principally the creator of advertising to stimulate demand (now a tiny subset of its responsibilities), to ensuring the entire organisation meets the customer expectations marketing has created.

Mike Moran, former marketing director and commercial director of Toyota, and now managing partner of the Orchard Consultancy, points out: "One bad experience on the phone trying to get BT Broadband connected could wipe out the desire, let alone the goodwill, created by millions of pounds of advertising." As such, he says, the marketing department has to work with all the customer-facing functions within the company to deliver a well-aligned brand experience to the customer.