Type 2 Consulting was created to serve an evident need for more business-literate marketers. Our explicit ambition was – and remains – to support the emergence of a “next generation” of marketers who are able to integrate marketing and finance. We consider this combination of skills to be essential for the creation of strategies that balance the needs of customer value and shareholder value.
Marketing and finance is only one dimension of the integrated thinking that we believe is necessary for this “next generation” of marketers to demonstrate. We believe that business-literate marketing involves having a working understanding of strategy, technology and (in a services company) HR as well. But the integration of marketing and finance is our primary focus.
We were aware that only some marketers would be interested in our services, although we believe passionately that all marketers should consider that basic fluency in finance to be essential. But it took a remark by one of the other speakers at the Thunderbird Winterim two weeks ago to crystallize my thinking about the segmentation of Type 2’s audience. Perceptively, he remarked “The participants wanted to hear about my topic – but they needed to hear about yours.”
I am totally OK with the fact that most marketers do not like finance. But we all like respect. If the answer to the title of this blog post is “the respect of my business colleagues”, then I see basic financial literacy as something that all marketers should want, not just need.
