‘Ich bin ein marketer’ were the opening words from Miles Templeman, Director General of the Institute of Directors, as he responded for the guests with a review of marketing since the 1970’s, at the installation dinner of Keith Arundale as Master for 2007 of the Worshipful Company of Marketors, the City livery company for marketing professionals.

Past Master Keith Arundale

International chartered accountant and chartered marketer, Keith Arundale, MSc, ARCS, DIC, FCA, FCIM, FIoD, is a speaker, author, consultant and visiting university lecturer on venture capital, entrepreneurship and marketing. He was previously leader of the European venture capital and business development programmes for the Global Technology Industry Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers.   Arundale has appropriately taken ‘Marketing entrepreneurship in the City’ as his theme, which will include the promotion of marketing in City boardrooms and the encouragement of marketing and entrepreneurship education, supported by a number of events and a series of six seminars on marketing and entrepreneurship topics during his year of office.

On the need to focus on getting marketing into the boardroom, Keith Arundale stated that only 14% of FTSE 100 companies have a marketing director on their boards and only 17% of FTSE 100 CEOs have a background in marketing and, despite the efforts of the professional marketing organisations, he believed that many people still do not understand exactly what marketing is.

Introduced by Keith Arundale as a passionate believer in the power of the brand, the value of enterprise and a champion of entrepreneurship and innovation, Miles Templeman reflected on the changes in the nature of marketing since he had started in the field in the 1970’s when all marketing was directed at consumer products, typically those of Procter & Gamble and Unilever. It was the age of slogans: beers that worked wonders and 1001 cleaning big carpets. By the 1980’s financial services and airline brands were making the running and the broader mix embraced telephony and IT.

Marketing, he said, remains an art, not a science. What marketing can bring to customer perception is often undervalued, and he commended the Master’s aim to raise the profile of marketing in the City.

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