58. Battle of Beliefs: Does professional certification kill marketers instinct?

The Unicorny Marketing Show

In this episode of Unicorny, Dom Hawes and guest Paul Worthington discuss whether marketing should be recognised as a formal profession or continue as a trade based on practical experience. They evaluate the potential impacts of standardising marketing practices—could it inhibit creativity and diminish competitive advantage?

• Weighing the merits of making marketing a formal profession—necessary organisation or a barrier to creativity?
• The role of data in marketing: valuable tool or potential crutch?
• Discussing whether marketing is better as a trade or as a profession.
• Examining the influence of AI on traditional marketing roles: is it progressive or disruptive?
• Does formal education really boost our marketing effectiveness, or does it limit our flexibility?

Listen to understand how these issues could alter your view of marketing.

About Paul Worthington

Paul Worthington is an entrepreneurial, creative, and strategic brand leader, coach, and senior adviser to executive leadership teams, with a deep competence in building brands for the digital era.

He has led combined strategy, design, and experience teams through major brand and innovation engagements, from initial pitches to transformed customer experiences across four continents, has lived on two, and tackled high-impact projects along the way. His accomplishments include helping what was then the world's largest corporation rationalize hundreds of brands into one, codifying the ideals of one of sport's most-watched tournaments, aiding an iconic technology company through two consecutive business transformations, and reinventing the retail banking experience for a digital world.

Paul's work has received awards from the AIGA, D&AD, and Cannes Lions. He has worked with notable clients at consequential brands including Microsoft, IBM, Citibank, GE, Activision, Belkin, PwC, HP, and O'Reilly.

At Invencion, Paul focuses on helping leaders discover what is special about their organizations so that together they can design strategies that are unique to them and uniquely meaningful to the people they serve. This work is based on the observation that in a fast-paced world, organizations require the deep anchor of purpose to guide decisions and create sustainable advantages through innovation.

Prior to founding Invencion, Paul spent ten years at the global consultancy Wolff Olins, joining after being inspired by their work for Orange. Starting as a junior consultant, he eventually ascended to the role of client principal, head of strategy, and member of both the global leadership and US management teams.

Links

Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk 

LinkedIn: Paul Worthington | Dom Hawes 

Website: Invencion

Sponsor: Selbey Anderson 

Other podcasts: Mike Linton's CMO Confidential