The holistic marketing approach is not overly common in German corporate culture. On the contrary, our marketing departments are often reduced to advertising departments. However, advertising products and services and thus allowing the sales departments to yield greater revenues is just one small part of the whole marketing process.

Philip Kotler, the American economist and professor of marketing, hits the nail on the head: “Marketing is the science and art of exploring, creating and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit.”

In local corporate cultures, the actual marketing responsibility is expressed as a poorly defined or a completely undefined management task. However, more and more companies are acknowledging the cogent causalities between strategic positioning, brand management or else business development and the accompanying holistic marketing strategy.

Marketing – i.e. the entire cycle from product and service development right through to commercialisation and aftersales services – affects all business divisions and is thus an essential process-related topic for full-service agencies such as Riba BusinessTalk.