> WORD FROM THE WISE
‘We’ve got to persuade a lot of people around the world of the ongoing value of our brand and translate this into revenue and profits for Irish companies, so marketing skills have never been more required
best practice and all the things I’ve learned over the last number of years, but particularly everything from Diageo, Coca-Cola and O2,” he explains. “I’ve worked with a lot of marketing models and I want to consolidate those into what I believe is my toolbox, my marketing model. “And there are so many changes happening at the moment in
terms of marketing – social trends, the economy, attitudes towards management and everything else – that I want to spend a little bit of time reorientating around what’s actually happening and not just hearing about it through the press or research groups. And then I want to prioritise where I want to spend the next 10 years.”
The role of marketing Devaney says he’s passionate about the role of marketing and how it can participate in solving the country’s current set of prob- lems. It’s something he’ll also be reflecting on over the next few months. “I’m interested in identifying what’s the best way to marry the skills I have with the issues of the day or the issues that I’m passionate about.” He believes he’s benefited hugely from working with companies
like Coca-Cola, Diageo and O2, which have a real understanding of the importance of marketing and have focused on training their people in the practice. With the exception of the small minority of really great marketing companies, Devaney says the function is not truly understood or appreciated in business generally. “People think of marketing as some type of discretionary spend,
but it’s not,” he says. “If you sit around a board table, the com- mercial guy understands the sale and its profitability but doesn’t necessarily understand the consumers. The finance guy under- stands the numbers. The engineer understands the product. But nobody has the task of understanding the people – who are the people these products are being promoted or sold to? Who are the people buying the products and services? What do they look like? How are they changing? What’s their view of us and the com- petition? These are questions that underpin commercial success. “The ability to understand and particularly to anticipate what
your customers want to buy is fundamental to the long-term suc- cess of a business. This should be a core skill in any business. In big companies like Coca-Cola, Diageo and O2, marketing is seen as a key driver in the company.”
20 Marketing Age Volume 4 Issue 3 2010
Marketing Ireland Devaney is of the opinion that marketing has an important part to play in helping Ireland as a country to get back on track. “We’ve got to persuade a lot of people around the world of the ongoing value of our brand and translate this into revenue and profits for Irish compa- nies, so marketing skills have never been more required. “I think Fáilte Ireland, Tourism Ireland, the IDA and Bord Bia are all
making their contribution to building various aspects of Ireland’s brand. Ireland as a brand punches above its weight and has been recognised for that. That worked brilliantly over the last number of years up until the crisis.” “We have this disproportionately positive image – people like our
country and we’ve done great things for our size and I think we have potential,” he continues. “But I do wonder whether Ireland should be putting more effort and expertise into managing the brand of Ireland at a higher level than industry categories like tourism and food and inward investment, which are done very well.” Starting to manage the potential and the brand has almost
become an imperative, he says. “We have all these problems andwe need to solve them with proper financial packages and indeed from an educational perspective. But I thinkmarketers have a huge role to play because we need to understand how we’re going to compete over the next 20 years and to make that proposition a reality.” Countries that he believes have adopted a best-practice approach
around managing their brands include Australia, New Zealand and Canada. “And look at Croatia, which has moved fromthe disaster of the Nineties in terms of the conflict to what it is today. “We almost need a SWOT [strengths, weaknesses, opportunities
and threats] analysis of where we’re at, what we are naturally good at and better at than somebody else, and then take the ‘better at than someone else’ that we can retain ownership of. Wouldn’t that be a really powerful place to be?”
A unified marketing voice A more co-ordinated effort from all the bodies representing various aspects of marketing would be valuable from the point of view of scale, efficiencies and a coherent voice, maintains Devaney. “At the moment it’s very fragmented.Given the size of our economywe have somany small representative bodies that we’re not able to sustain. If marketing is going to play a role in getting us out of this situation we
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