Don't allow your business to get woke and go broke

What do the following businesses have in common? A razor company, a beer brewery, an ice cream manufacturer, a tea retailer, a soap and skincare company, a UK-based building supply firm and sportswear manufacturers?

They all went woke and went broke. At least to some extent.

But why? Why did those utterly dissimilar firms from different parts of the world, suddenly decide to tell their old, established customers that they no longer wanted or required their business any longer?

How come those businesses all suddenly decided that they would become left wing and liberal? 

The truth is that they probably didn't. But their marketing departments probably did.

Newly minted marketing officers with their new marketing degrees were probably trained by the people I saw teaching marketing.

Several years ago and some years late, I Finished off my degree (for those interested it was a BA Honours course in Creative and Professional Writing) and as part of the course I decided to study with the university marketing department as I wanted to add marketing to my writing skillset. 

The department consisted of a Marxist-Leninist former Spanish journalist and a former journalist from Venezuela who was an out-and-out Maduroist.

Neither of them taught any marketing as part of the marketing modules and many of the students were puzzled by the lack of marketing components in the marketing modules. We were, however, taught much left wing theorising. 

We were intrigued by the proud boast by the Spanish lecturer that he knew much more about marketing than an MA student he was teaching who had a 30 year track record in marketing.

When a fellow student called him out on this, he went quiet and was unable to do provide any evidence for his claim. It actually transpired that neither lecturer had any real world experience in marketing in either their home countries or the UK.

So, if you wanted any advice on marketing cheese, for example, they'd be unable to help. Though they could provide you with a left wing spin on the evils of the cheese industry. 

Unfortunately many students on marketing courses like that worldwide are being influenced by such biased and inept lecturers. Obviously you would not want them turning your marketing department and social media channels into a hotbed of left wing propaganda.

So, how do you stop this from happening? Make sure that when you are recruiting anyone for marketing roles that you have them go through a proper psychometric testing process to weed out anyone who wouldn't actually be helping market your business.

A company which offers this type of assessment is called Wilford-Scholes. You can find them, here:-

https://wilfordscholes.com/hr-recruitment/pre-hire-assessments. 

(Image courtesy of narciso1 from Pixabay)