Presumptuousness, thy name is youth. I'm only two weeks into my marketing management program, and already I'm about to try to evaluate it. I don't want to be one of those students who thinks they know more than their teacher. God knows I DON'T. In a similar vein, I think my greatest fear when arriving at my first "real" job is that I'll fall into one of the stereotypes. You know what they are. The over-eager fresh out of school employee. Always overdressed, a little too excitable about any given project. Or maybe the entitlement intern. Wondering why they aren't at the important meetings. Complaining that their talents are wasted in the mailroom. Rolling their eyes at every directive given by their boss...

Wait, this isn't what I meant to talk about at all.

The program! Fresh out of University with an Honours B.A. in Psychology, and right into the fascinating world of retail. As in, stocking shelves at a grocery store. So, without missing a beat, off to college for a one year specialist course in marketing management. Complete with a short internship built into the course (to a point). I am fully confident that if I apply myself, this course will help me get that elusive career.

But I've already noticed an interesting trend. Each course deals with different levels of the industry, and many of them seem to disagree. Or at least treat the other as an afterthought. Direct Marketing, Professional Selling, Distribution, and Fundamentals of Marketing...these are the bickering siblings. Marketing Leadership and Pre-placement seminar...they can have a seat, this isn't about them.

The issue really falls more on the first three. Fundamentals of Marketing is really an overarching topic, but we're already seeing some friction between it and Professional Selling. In PS, we're being taught that the current paradigm in selling is relationship building: we need to enter into a long-term mutually beneficial relationship with clients. That concept was brought up in FoM, but...the teacher wasn't really accepting that idea. He was thinking more in terms of transactional relationships, the kind of business that doesn't use salespeople. "Come into our store and buy bananas," that sort of thing. Now, there is relationship building there, you want to get people to always come to your store and buy your bananas, so there are customer service tactics involved, etc. He seems to be subscribing to the "no customer loyalty" train of thought; which, I suppose, is fairly realistic based on some things I've seen. But we're all about the client partnership in PS.

More amusing are the cases of Distribution, and Direct Marketing. Each of these two courses almost flat out claims to be the most important component in marketing. I can sort of see it. Distribution makes the case that you can target the right market, put together the best advertising campaign, and have the best salespeople in the biz, but if you don't deliver what and when you promised...bam. All gone. I do like that PS has made several references to being on top of your logistics, so at least there's some compatibility. Then there's direct marketing. In DM, we're told how it's more efficient, gets a bigger budget, has all these advantages, blah blah blah. Very self important.

I suppose the key is to take all these components, recognize that they're all very vital, and know how to balance them correctly into the proper mix for a successful business.

That's enough out of me for now; I have a lot of reading to do.