The Marketing Society

The Marketing Society is the exclusive membership network for discerning marketers to learn, develop, share best practice and network. Over the last 50 years we have emerged as one of the most influential drivers of marketing. We challenge our 2600 members to think differently and be bolder marketing leaders by supporting the development of leading-edge thinking, and promoting the evidence of effective marketing. We do this through a calendar of events and a range of publications including Market Leader, our quarterly journal, Our Week, a weekly email newsletter and The Marketing Society blog, LinkedIn Group and Twitter feed.

Our 2011 programme addresses the question of how marketers need to change to face the challenges of the future and includes four themes: customer champions, digital, the green agenda, and growth drivers. We’re delighted that ITV is our customer champion partner.

If The Marketing Society sounds like the place for you, please do get in touch.

Here are 15 Things we learnt from our 50th Anniversary Conference, an inspiring day - digested, absorbed and presented for your convenience.

• Between the age of 10 and 11 the average child spends about 900 hours in class, 1200 with family and friends and 2000 in front of a screen, according to neuroscientist Susan Greenfield
• The consumer of the future will have a shorter attention span, reduced empathy, less sense of identity and be less risk averse
• The ‘cacophony of content’ could get worse before it gets better – and monetising user generated content is no longer being pursued as the holy grail of online
• When it comes to the future it’s not about being right, it’s about being ready, says futurologist Tamar Kasriel
• Brands and the media today are controlled by the consumer. As marketers we need to embrace the chaos and work out how to manage it
•  ‘Expectation inflation’ has eaten away at our happiness. In the US, the ‘happiness index’ has actually risen since the recession
•  Successful companies are showing that consumers can and will take over every point in the supply chain
• People would pay more attention to the emergency announcements on planes if they were sung as opera
• Our world is increasingly dominated by fashion and style, which is merging with entertainment – marketing directors need to become style directors said John Hegarty
•  In 1859 Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000 year lease on the St James brewery in Dublin and the remarkable 250th anniversary celebrations this year saw 200 million fans of the black stuff in bars across the world raise a toast to Arthur
• There are many ‘green fakers’ out there who say one thing and do another – the implicit and the explicit do not always match up and we need to understand the implications of this for marketing
• Stelios wishes he hadn’t believed his own bulls**t in the dotcom era and opened his internet cafes. He now says if something seems too good to be true – it is
• Shoppers look at a label in a supermarket for 5-7 seconds
•  Each of us on average owes 19 months pay in debt
•  London Mayor, Boris Johnson has high hopes for the London Olympics. Sales of Tsingau beer quadrupled during the Beijing Games and sales of condoms doubled during the Sydney Olympics