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I have been sent an email by the Chartered Institute of Marketing - the subject heading was 'Marketing and Sales Standards'. Interesting I thought and I read on. Their vision is for a comprehensive and robust qualification structure for the marketing profession (like our CIPS?).



One of their 5 reasons for looking at this is address any skills gaps and this includes commercial/business awareness (good point as I think it is an area that Marketing could develop as long as it doesn't do procurement out of a job !).



But my thoughts were that I hear more and more agencies asking the procurement person if they are CIPS qualified and indeeed I think quite a few agencies have become associate members of CIPS to get the 'inside track' on us. I only know of one agency that has a procurement person and he is going through his CIPS qualification.



My point being that procurement are asked and perhaps judged on the industry qualification, what about Marketing ? Is CIM a current must for marketing people ? I know many excellent Marketing people and I bet that they are not CIM qualified. Are CIM trying to drive the qualification structure for the good of the marketing industry or for CIM ? All comments welcome and I have the link to the survey, if anyone would like it.



Interesting stats in the mailer

• The marketing profession, which includes marketing communications, is a significant professional group within the UK economy across all four nations


• It employs approximately 592,000 people, which represents around 1.9% of the UK’s workforce


• It is estimated that approximately 90% of the marketing workforce is employed in England, 6% in Scotland, 3% in Wales and 1% in Northern Ireland