News
Marketing in the Future and the Future of Marketing
Full Professor Iscte Business School
Director Marketing, Operations and General Management Department and Audax
Presenting companies with success trends in marketing and management is the mission of Iscte's FutureCast Lab, which saw the pandemic as an opportunity to discover and show good examples
Iscte's Management & Marketing FutureCast Lab became known to the public during the pandemic. Can you explain how this happened?
In 2020, when we were surprised by the pandemic at Iscte's Management & Marketing FutureCast Lab, we started thinking about the best way to help companies overcome a more complex situation. It was a time to close ranks, find ideas, and show inspiring examples.
Therefore, we designed a series of 20 programs of three minutes each for RTP 1 – "Three Minutes to Inspire Portugal" – in which we showed companies and other organisations from different sectors of activity of all sizes, from Minho to the Algarve. In addition to the interviews and reports with the companies, a professor from Iscte Business School concluded each episode by relating it to the trends we have already studied, which could be a lesson for other companies. These films had a global audience of 11.7 million people, which is indicative of the interest they aroused.
The programme "Três Minutos a Inspirar Portugal," which showed companies that recovered from the post-COVID crisis, was seen by 11.7 million people on RTP
Did your action in the pandemic stop there?
No, not at all. Following these films, we held three conferences, the first entirely online and the others in a hybrid format, in which we debated the same topics and continued to reveal examples. At the last conference, we launched a book – "Post-COVID Management, Examples and Inspiring Trends" – in which we collected examples of trends and companies succeeding in Portugal and abroad.
How did FutureCast Lab come about?
The FutureCast Lab was born in 2008, inspired by Luiz Moutinho, an international reference in marketing education, with Vicente Rodrigues, and it is now part of Audax-Iscte. In these 14 years, we have already analysed 140 trends related to management and marketing, nationally and internationally, in various sectors of activity, in a logic of anticipation. For example, we are currently looking at sustainability in its different aspects, particularly in light of the energy crisis. We work a lot within companies in workshops and actions to disseminate new trends. Finally, we have collaborated on product and service innovation projects of several companies, such as C.T.T., Galp, Brisa, and Central de Cervejas... and we have already done so in collaboration with other Iscte units, such as ISTAR in architecture, in virtual reality projects.
This year, we are developing a project to internationalise companies jointly with AICEP. We have a program of 50 trends applied to 11 sectors, including metalworking, fashion, health, and information technology. We are also developing 10 webinars on internationalisation with experts on several key topics for companies. This action ends with a great conference at Iscte.
Let us talk a little about yourself and the marketing education in Portugal. You started with sociology...
I started by doing the first year of management at the Catholic University in 1972/73. Right after, I entered Iscte for the Labour Sciences course, which would be called Sociology after the 25th of April. In other words, my first degree was in Sociology. Nevertheless, I started working before I finished my degree, and in the third year, I started my first company, selling books.
I felt the need to learn management and did my degree after work. In the third year, there was a Commercial Management course, which interested me a lot. In the fourth year, I took a marketing course at LNETI (National Laboratory of Industrial Engineering and Technology) with the E.S.C. of Lyon. At the end of the course, I was invited to become a trainer at LNETI.
When I finished management, I worked in two companies (computer and glassware) and, the following year, in 1982, I started teaching at Iscte as an assistant, having started my PhD a year later. At that time, there was a tendency to put an end to this area at Iscte, so we (myself and my colleague Vicente Rodrigues) developed a set of actions that led to the maintenance and development of Commercial Management and Marketing.
Today, marketing is a relevant area at Iscte, with a degree in Marketing Management—currently focused on Digital—and a complete offer of courses. Our students excel and win prominent national awards; we have teachers and researchers who stand out in the university scene. One of our secrets is that we collaborate very closely with companies: students develop specific projects for companies with real problems and data, and companies get involved in realising and evaluating these projects.
Every year, students hold the Marketing Journeys, the largest university event in this area.
How did you come up with the idea of launching Mercator, a book that will serve as a reference for those who study marketing in Portugal?
Mercator was born at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales in Paris, the leading French business school that usually tops the main international rankings in the sector. As the book has versions in several countries, we were challenged to make one in Portugal, which happened in 1992, under my coordination and that of Vicente Rodrigues. It was the first large-volume book on marketing in Portugal and was even rejected by some publishers, who thought there was no market for something of this size.
The truth is that, over these 30 years, we have sold more than 140 thousand books. More than editions, the book has had versions: 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2009, 2015 (Mercator of the Portuguese Language), and 2018 (the 25th-anniversary edition, about the Digital Age). Over the years, we have been trying to keep up with the major trends in marketing, bringing together Portuguese cases and examples.
MERCATOR
O Marketing na Era Digital
Arnaud de Baynast, Jacques Lendrevie, Julien Lévy, Pedro Dionísio, Vicente Rodrigues
D. Quixote
Lisbon 2022
In 14 years, Audax's FutureCast Lab has already analysed 140 trends related to management and marketing, nationally and internationally, in various sectors of activity, predicting emerging challenges with new contexts
The Iscte Alumni Club is another passion...
It is a more recent passion... And, once again, because of the challenge of Vicente Rodrigues. Iscte has more than 100,000 former students, an immense capital. In addition to knowledge, Iscte has produced in these 50 years more than 100 thousand graduates in areas that are very important to the country.