Marketing genius and economic downturn

I cannot help it not to share the results of CIM survey, published at http://www.brandrepublic.com/Marketing/News/865676/Half-marketers-change-plans-due-economy/

Particularly interesting is the quote of David Thorp, director of research and information at The Chartered Institute of Marketing: ‘Despite deep concern about the prospects for the UK economy, today's professional marketers recognise that they have a key role to play in helping their organisations identify and exploit the opportunities an economic downturn brings. By creating real value for their organisations and measuring the effectiveness of their marketing activities, marketers can demonstrate clearly how indispensable they are to their organisation.'

In the times of cost cutting and staff optimization it is very surprising the desire of many CEOs to fire professional marketers and as they say ‘stay with proven sales people only. I wonder if it is because those marketers could not prove their value for the success of the company, or disappointing results were laid on marketer shoulders only? The vital role of marketing strategy is even more important, as told by D. Thorp, to identify and exploit the opportunities, run optimization, set clear marketing metrics and continue delivering the products/services profitably.

I personally think that we would be witnesses of new “Japanese miracle” in a couple of years that would be delivered by marketing geniuses of today and tomorrow, the ones who were not frightened by the today’s downturn, the ones actually appreciated by CEO and stakeholders to seize new marketing opportunities. An era of effective and efficient marketers, market-driven products/services worldwide, increased customer power and permission marketing that have started already would be snowballing now.