Knowledge gained by marketing professionals from a range of client industries can make a useful contribution to key industry issues.

Working in marketing & communications brings experiences from all walks of business life. This accumulated knowledge can help to build marketing skills that are transferable across market sector boundaries. It can also reveal that there are many similarities in challenges faced by companies operating in widely varying areas of activity. Marketers can acquire insights into an industry that may have escaped those employed within it and their detached objective view from outside the sector can be useful.

We conduct day-to-day research into a wide range of subjects, which is supporting a series of articles we are currently producing that give our perceptions as marketers on key topics affecting different industries. Our ideas on how the food industry can improve its communications with consumers on the issues of healthy diet, GM foods and nanotechnology are featured in the Brandboost blog  and have been recently covered by the publication Food Manufacture. Our next project relates to how the views of engineers should gain more prominence in the climate change debate.

There are an increasing number of ways to communicate and opportunities for people to make their ideas known and open for comment. For instance, the current level of public spending reduction has been compared to the 1970s, but at that time it would not have been feasible to have undertaken the Coalition’s recent initiative requesting suggestions from the public on where cuts could be made. Today’s communication methods made it possible to gain fresh outlooks on long-standing problems.

We hope that our series articles covering a range of sectors will provide similarly fresh outlooks on tackling important industry issues.