Designers in the time of marketing
Inside companies the marketing division kept an important role of projections and budget figures, as they represent the PR and financial side of the business model. Through the years the marketing department acquired more importance and power within a company because of its ties with multiple divisions.
I personally define marketing the entity that gives life and death to a product or to a service, because it provides forecast on how good or bad the numbers can be but also if anything can be profitable. We can say there are exclusive priorities that dwell in marketing which have influential power in an enterprise.
Marketing is that element that connects pretty much with all aspects of the business having the ability to work between predictions and money to invest. However, such role has overtaken too much from the company and drifted everything into marketable opportunities that purely rely on numbers and well defined rules of engagement.
The science of math and forecast used to see if a product is profitable has created a tunnel vision which focused entirely on money. This is the habits of the movie industry along with the TV show biz which can be held as a vivid example of marketing strategies going only in one direction, excluding the user and new possible solution of product/service development. It’s understandable that profits should be one of the priorities, but neglecting other factors will take out of sight new opportunities for portfolio development and diversification.
Now that designers are entering the different tiers of corporations we can expect the game to change. I already wrote and spoke about how companies like IBM are hiring designer by the number because the big industries are running out of ideas; the same ideas that marketing has been delivering for decades. Managers don’t want only predictions based on numbers that come out of equations that don’t reflect reality, they want’ behavior and trends that can explore corners the marketing departments cannot, they want new horizons to sail.
It is possible that in the next five to seven years designers will slowly replace certain aspects of the marketing department, because creatives have the gift of understanding and crafting solutions others cannot. Designers see past boundaries and set trends because they are not bound by the rigid rules of math. That’s why you want creative people inside your company.
Designers can foresee things from multiple angles and apply their knowledge on the necessary problematic. This is something that no other department can do because they are task-drive and don’t ‘bleed’ outside their realm. So, industries will benefit from designers and correct the many mistakes marketing made throughout stereotypes, assumptions, ignorance.
This is going well beyond the “Outside the box” ideology. This will define the way companies will look at themselves; for far too long they have been gazing at their customers and little inside their walls. This is a great opportunity to break boundaries of staleness and reshape industries.
