The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

By Angela Haggerty, Reporter

April 4, 2013 | 2 min read

Marketing as a "revolutionary force" will be a big influence on the future of British business and encouraging new recruits in the world of small business is essential for change, according to founder of HERD Consulting, Mark Earls.

Earls, who wrote Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harness Our True Nature in 2009 and co-authored I'll Have What She's Having: Mapping Social Behaviour in 2011, said not understanding the rules of industry can be a useful way for new minds to make much-needed change rather than a hindrance.

"I remember being told by a client of mine in margarine that because I had no experience in the category it was going to be two years before I had anything interesting to say to him," said Earls. "That's clearly not true, what it would mean is I had two years before I'd learn what the rules were.

"British business is a little to deferential to the past so we need to encourage people who don't know much about how it's really done in a category so they can change it."

Earls has been named as a judge on the panel for the Change Ambassadors Programme, which comes as part of a partnership between the Economist Group and Microsoft Dynamics to showcase factors responsible for positive change within UK enterprise.

"We often think that change is some kind of heroic decision that happens in a moment: click, change and everyone turns 180 degrees and heads off in the opposite direction," added Earls, who has senior experience from his time at advertising agencies Ogilvy and St Luke's. "That's not what change is really about; change is the long haul of many decisions.

"British business gets stuck in practices, we're really quite conservative and we imagine there are things like best practice, which is the law of how it's always been in industry."

Change Ambassadors is calling for final entries to its awards event, which will recognise employees who have executed successful change within their organisation in the UK in the last two years.

You can view the latest jobs in marketing by visiting The Drum's job section

Microsoft Jobs The Economist

More from Microsoft

View all