Today I ask my lecturer that if I wanted to study for a degree in Marketing, where should I go? He told me to check out MIS (Marketing Institute of Singapore), the chairman is his friend and this friend started the Mediacorp Group. Another option is SIM (Singapore Institute of Management) because it is reputable although he is not sure about its marketing course.
However what he said next surprised me. He said the best marketers are engineers! He mention that those lecturers that are teaching at Insead (one of the leading management schools in the world) have engineering background. And even in knowledge of finance, engineers are the ones that are good at it, not accountants. Because engineering is a process, it is the improvement of process that put them one up. I am starting to have a new found RESPECT for engineers...
It does make sense because I read a book "Conversation with Marketing Masters", apparently some of these marketing masters had a degree or masters in a totally different discipline from marketing, like economics, engineering or even science. Yet they are the marketing masters. One example is Philip Kotler who is economics trained and a french guy (can't remember the name) who invented a program for marketing strategy.
My lecturer told me to be a marketer, I must have knowledge in finance because marketing is about bringing in profits and I need to know how to read the financials and derive the figures. He told me that since I work in a financial institute I should know all these and overcome it. What he said next really struck me,
"A marketer who doesn't know finance is just a bloody salesman!"
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