Marketers have itchy feet

One of the reasons why people think the over-50s are given the cold shoulder by youthful marketers is that they only think about their own age cohort. There maybe a large element of truth to this argument but there is another aspect of the marketing profession that provides an equally convincing explanation – marketers don’t hang around in the same job long enough to make real change.

This research has just been published for marketing magazine in the UK. Here are some of the findings.

The length of time that marketers stay in the same job, by age is:
2 years 2 months in their 20s
2 years 9months in their (early) 30s
4 years 4 months in their (mid) 30s

Notice anything missing? No? Have another look. Still can’t see it? Answer at the end of this blog posting.

The lengths of time that different categories of marketers are employed are:
Brand Managers 2 years 11 months
Marketing Manager 3 years 2 months
Marketing Director 4 years 2 months

So what does this mean about the chances of a marketer making a significant change to their company’s marketing strategy?

Consider this musing. A 20-something joins a company, not knowing a great deal about marketing. It probably takes 6 months to get a real understanding of the subject and what the company is all about. That accounts for 23% of their time in the job. For the last 3 months, before leaving, they are probably thinking more about their next job than their current one. That accounts for (11%). Take out holidays and sickness, another couple of months (11%). For at lease 6 months of the job they will be involved in the boring mechanistic type of work that doesn’t give them the chance to think about anything strategic. That is another (23%)

This leaves with a grand total of less than a third of their time employed actually doing much creative thinking and work. That explains a lot. For those dimwits that did not see the missing item – they don’t analyse the behaviour of marketers over the age of 35. Why? Because the sample size is too small. Dick Stroud.