Johnnie

This seems to be just the latest article in a trend towards bashing quantitative types (like MBAs) so that the creative types (who generally don't have MBAs) can get on with producing marketing that wins prizes, but probably doesn't drive either the top or the bottom line.

Marketing probably needs a healthy mix of both quantitative types to help decide where marketing money is best spent and creative types to help decide how to best influence its targets to do the marketers' bidding. But the creative types have wasted far too many billions on useless campaigns over the past decades to deserve the free run of the marketing department today.

Graham Hill
Independent Marketing Consultant
(No MBA)

Hi Graham, as with all such items, it tells just part of a story. I linked without a lot of comment as I didn't intend to read too much into it. Thanks for pointing to the dangers of sweeping generalisations.

Having said that, I don't think it's about a battle between quantitative and non-quantitative. The article itself makes its argument using quantitative analysis. How we interpret that is up to us, but I don't interpret the article as bashing quantitative types".

I don't think you have to be non-quantitative to be creative. "Creative types" sounds like a way of stereotyping creativity as inherently careless and capricious.

Likewise, having a quantitative mindset does not make you immune to mis-spending. I've witnessed some marketing people who are terrific at budgeting and handy with metrics waste millions of pounds. They wasted the money very efficiently, but they wasted it.