Australian Marketing Institute discovers positioning

I’d like to personally thank the brains trust at the Australian Marketing Institute for pointing out the bloody obvious “Marketers should have the final say on industry positioning.”

After 70 odd years since its establishment and nearly 40 forty years since Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote a series of articles for the Advertising Age on positioning, the penny finally dropped.  The Institute has finally recognised the importance of positioning and it being a key responsibility for marketers. It’s an epiphany.

I knew there was a reason for paying my membership.

However, I’m struggling to understand after this epiphany, why our Institute’s brain trust opted to abdicate the responsibility and a leadership role to others.  In fact, it’s just down right odd.

How can you claim a position and then freely hand it over with resources and support to groups such as the Australian Association of National Advertisers, the Australian Direct Marketing Association and the Advertising Federation of Australia.

I don’t remember these groups standing up for Institute members. In fact, the overwhelming reality is these groups represent multi-million dollar corporations. Corporations that don’t give a rat’s arse about marketing professionals.

Surprise, surprise, it’s the Institute’s role to represent its 6,500 members.  It’s not the role of the Institute to handover our aspirations to groups like the Advertising Federation of Australia that represent 185 commercial operations.

Or to the Australian Direct Marketing Association that represent over 500 businesses. Or to the Australian Association of National Advertisers that represent companies that spend over $30 billion a year in advertising, marketing and media industry.

The only reason these groups exist is to protect their member’s antiquated practices and standards and to fight against change. This is the antitheist of marketing.

I remember signing up to an Institute that positioned itself as the peak marketing body, but now, it’s just the largest marketing body. It was the industry leader representing marketing professionals, but now, it supports other industry groups.

Once the Institute tried to gain a place for marketers at the boardroom table, but now, it wants marketing to be a function of finance. It said it wanted a unified marketing voice, but now, it tries to dictator marketing practices on its members.

If the institute is to flourish, it has to be relevant and representing its members. In other words, it has to position itself as THE peak marketing body and stop ‘Kow Towing’ to others and dribbling out worthless empty rhetoric.

Regretfully, announcing that ‘Marketers should have the final say on industry positioning‘ is all rhetoric and no action.

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