Marketing management - educating megatrend architects.

By Professor Zak Nel, futurologist and academic head of the IMM Graduate School of Marketing

Marketing managers can see the future and they can make it happen. They are the new megatrend makers of business and society. The implementation of megatrends concepts by marketing managers has become such a compelling factor that it virtually affects all of our lives in one way or other, says. After studying the careers of some of South Africa's outstanding marketing managers, this is very evident.

It is nearly 30 years since, Alvin Toffler, the original futurologist, published Future Shock, a book that is now known as the "Old Testament" of futurology. Toffler attempted to describe shifts in the lives of people that happen so quickly that people are simply overwhelmed by change. He coined the classical definition of future shock as too much change in too short a period of time.

The "Old Testament" of futurology was followed by the "New Testament", a book known as Megatrends produced by John Naisbitt in 1982. The influence of Megatrends can be gauged by the fact that it has sold more than 9 million copies in 57 countries. A megatrend is when a change factor becomes self-sustaining in everyday life after some threshold point has been reached. The "entrepreneurial woman" is an example of a megatrend as nearly 50% of all small businesses in the US are women-owned, a trend that was predicted 30 years ago.

In assessing the accuracy of the predictions made more than two decades ago, it is actually remarkable to see overall how accurate most of the predictions were. However, there are a few lessons that we have learned from the discipline of futurology - now offered as a subject at innovative business schools or in departments of sociology. One of the lessons learned is that people have coped much better with the syndrome of future shock than originally anticipated. In hindsight, it appears as if the post-war generation initially struggled with the explosive pace of changes, but a younger generation have now adapted so well to change that they actually needs innovation and variety to be energised and stimulated.

A second lesson learned is that there are indeed limitations in which specific predictions can be made. The methodology in coining megatrends allows for the making of fairly accurate overall predictions, but when it comes to specific predictions the future remains foggy. This seems to be especially true of statistical issues central to the economy, for instance predicting stock market prices and job market figures.

The third important lesson learned from the discipline of futurology centres around the "coining" of the megatrends. It has to do with the putting a name to a megatrend, a fairly complicated process in which tons of information must be sifted to extract the most salient aspects. After studying the careers of the most influential marketing managers in South Africa, it is apparent that top marketing managers are natural megatrend "architects". Marketeers are excellent at selecting strategic important information, then connecting divergent sets of information and giving a name to the trend.

An explanation for this uncanny ability of marketing managers can be found in the nature of the job that they are involved in. Marketing professionals not only work with a set of activities performed by organisations, but they also need to understand the social processes operating outside their organisations. It also involves grasping the implications of a trend once it has been coined. Futurology is not uncommon to developing a good marketing strategy and turning the strategy into a marketing plan - actions that requires the sensible blending of ideas. An example is the well-known company, Postnet, where the marketing manager, together with the executive team, has accurately "read" the megatrend for the need of a personal and convenient logistic and communication service. Postnet has realised the importance of delivering the service in a one-stop friendly and efficient manner. Postnet is now so successful that their franchises are in big demand.

If marketing managers are becoming the wise futurologists of tomorrow, the challenging question is then how are they to be educated and trained. It is very evident that the scope of training their education must be broad. The role of a marketing manager can vary significantly, based on the type and size of an organisation and industry context. Marketing managers must not only be able to coin and understand future trends, but they also need to implement marketing techniques. In a certain sense it is true to say that marketing managers are often responsible for influencing the level, timing, and composition of customer demand. Their jobs will encompasses both the development of new products and services and their delivery to customers.

The education programme of a marketing manager should include a basic business component, but marketing managers should be shaped to operate as megatrend architects. They need to think in terms of long-term time-frames and be able to foresee the implications of long-term decisions. Their intellectual orientation needs to be more of an inductive and intuitive nature, and they need to find synergy between diverse information. Marketing managers should be educated as proactive leaders that can verbalise the ever-changing and dynamic trends in society in such a manner that business opportunities can be extracted from the trends. The era of the marketing manager as a megatrend architect has just dawned.