It's a rare occasion that I'll attend a business breakfast. I'm not particularly good at the networking-vibe and well, until my third cup of coffee and a whole heap of scrambled eggs, I'm as talkative and interesting as our esteemed Minister of Transport, Jeff Radebe, at his best.

Nonetheless, I found myself at a Journal of Marketing breakfast yesterday that was addressing "Marketing in Crisis". It was a well-to-do event - the marketing garb is well-defined: Diesel spectacles, tweed jackets, bow-ties and business card in hand. Aiden walks in with his trusty 5-year old shoes, flapping cardigan and contact lenses ... clearly not of the Marketing fold.

Hosted by Jeremy Maggs (a really good discussion facilitator by the way) the panel discussion addressed how in recent years the landscape of marketing has changed and has resulted in a crisis within the industry. Knowing very little about the field, except a few token thoughts on how narrative needs to be used in capturing the markets attention, I found it interesting how the industry does indeed seem to be in crisis, from within at least.

The major threads of the discussion revolved around identity - how within organisations marketers do not know where they stand, how they are often pitted against the finance blokes and their stringent, bottom-line focussed budgets. There was an issue around what a marketer is and lamentation around the lack of academic standardisation in young graduates.

At one stage I nearly fell off of my chair (nearly spilling a damn good helping of fried mushrooms) as someone suggested that a reasonable action to address the low barrier of entry into the career would be to establish as association to regulate the qualifications people have in the field and how those qualifications should dictate their position and mandate in building a brand within a company. I couldn't help but think that if, by an off-chance, I was contemplating entering the industry how I would be discouraged by such an idea. And these guys were wondering why there is such a severe lack of young, bright talent coming into the formal marketing field?

I think this story is another example of what happens when an industry's world is shaken and in picking up the pieces people are reluctant to embrace and build a new identity. It's easy to become in ward focussed and punt how the industry was built in the good old days by great qualifications and timeous career planning.

I cannot help but fear that Marketing is in fact dying if the industry pundits fail to see a new form of marketing emerge with a new vision and a new focus. You see, this sort of change is not driven by the marketing guru's, but by the customers.

I did try once to put my hand up to raise this very point. The mic didn't come my way though - I'm pretty sure I saw Mr Maggs face drop when he saw my hand motioning upwards and promptly directed the mic-holder away from the non-marketing, slob, young type I am.

Tisk, tisk.