Thursday, May 29, 2014

Engineers in marketing

When you look at a glass containing water do you see a glass half full, or a glass half empty?

Depending on the answer, the person is seen as optimistic if they see the glass half full, or pessimistic if they describe the glass as half full. But ask an engineer and they will speculate as to why the glass is twice the volume it needs to be to contain that volume of water. Engineers ask why? A pretty useful    capability in marketing. A physicist might be able to explain the theory of how things work, but an engineer asks why. Incidentally an accountant might ask what does it cost? Oh, and an arts graduate might ask, " do you want fries with that?"

Being questioning and inquisitive is always a useful characteristic in marketing to challenge, to research facts, analyse data and plan. In fact very much like an engineering project. As marketers engineers are pretty good at resisting the telephone sales pitches from people pitching media space and avoid buying ad hoc and unplanned space. IT  skills come in pretty handy too with the advance of digital marketing.





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