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Does Marketing Have a Soul?

Marketing practice has been subject to critiques around developing consumerism, environmental damage and accusations that marketing practices have made us fatter, less happy with how we look and more impoverished. Conversely, marketing, as a central business practice has been applauded as putting the customer’s needs first, helping to develop and promote improved products and services that can enhance our lives. Alongside this, marketing theories have been deployed in the areas of social marketing and transformative consumer research in tackling big social and cultural issues. Within this context, it might be good to stop and think about marketing within society and ask the question, does marketing have a soul? In posing this question we acknowledge the debate around the existence of a soul and in doing so we note that many religious and philosophical discussions of the soul connect this with a moral sense or moral sensor. In asking if marketing has a soul, we are both questioning the existence of such a moral sensor but also debating what such a moral centre can be in the context of contemporary marketing practice.

The Department of Marketing at Birmingham Business School, invite you join us at our event on Thursday the 23rd of October 2014 from 6.15 to 8pm. The session will be chaired by Isabelle Szmigin, Professor of Marketing at University of Birmingham and our three excellent speakers Nikhilesh Doholakia (University of Rhode Island, US), Olga Kravets (Bilkent University, Turkey) and Martin Johnston (Earth Creative Strategies) will reflect on the current state of marketing practice and the role marketing can, does and should play in a wider society. Following this there will be plenty of opportunity for questions and discussions.

Date and Time: Thursday 23rd of October, 2014 from 18.00-20.30

Place: Birmingham Business School, University House, Edgbaston, Birmingham

18.00-18.15 Registration in The Atrium, University House
18.15-19.45 Presentations and discussion
19.45-20.30 Drinks reception

Speaker biographies:

Isabelle Szmigin is Professor of Marketing at the Birmingham Business School. Her research interests include consumer behaviour, social and ethical marketing and policy issues around business. She is a strong believer in the possibility for business and not just marketing to have a soul.

Nikhilesh (“Nik”) Dholakia is Professor of Marketing and International Business in the College of Business Administration at the University of Rhode Island (URI) in USA. His research deals with the intersections of globalization, technology, innovation, market processes, and consumer culture. Among his books are Consuming People: From Political Economy to Theaters of Consumption (Routledge, 1998) and Toward a Metatheory of Economic Bubbles: Socio-Political and Cultural Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Articles authored by him have appeared in numerous international journals. Dr. Dholakia has been a co-winner of the Charles Slater award for the Journal of Macromarketing. He has also chaired doctoral dissertations that have won the MSI/Clayton and ACR/Sheth Foundation awards. Dr. Dholakia holds a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology at Delhi (IIT-Delhi), an MBA from Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad (IIMA), and a Ph.D. in Marketing from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.

Olga Kravets is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Bilkent University, Faculty of Business Administration, Ankara, Turkey. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research interests lie with the historical, socio-cultural, and political aspects of consumption and markets in transitional societies. Her previous research examined classed consumption, materialities of marketing, and the intersection thereof with political ideologies. She worked at A.C. Nielsen Australia, a market research company, and her research was published in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Marketing Management, Ephemera, Journal of Material Culture, Business History Review, and edited books.

Martin Johnston is the director and founder of Earth Creative Strategies, a creative communications agency that works to align our clients’ business objectives with their core values—elevating their brand. Earth is the force behind major branding and design reinventions and solutions for Somerset House, the Commonwealth, Land Securities, and The Northbank, among others. Before launching Earth Branding in 2010, Martin led strategies for Breathe Branding in the Middle East and Asia. He is working to pioneer a measurement tool designed to measure the social value of brands.

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