Stewart: You mentioned the fragmentation of the media and obviously that has been driven by the growth of online….How do you see the Scottish online landscape?

Mark: It feels very young…it feels quite inexperienced and it feels driven by creative energy, technical expertise and technical innovation.The concern I have about the digital industry in Scotland is that it doesn’t feel particularly embedded by marketing people, it feels more embedded by creative and technical people….and that’s great because a lot of the online opportunities are technical but when you’ve got to go out there and spread marketing messages to people, I think if you lack that skill base in marketing that could be something which hampers our industry.

That is perhaps just because we are in the early stages and there is a lot of people growing up and into those roles but I would like to see more of a focus on the quality of the strategic thinking about the message, rather than the medium.

Stewart: So what are the pitfalls of just focusing on the medium rather than the message?

Mark: That the content is irrelevant, or the content is naive, or the content doesn’t engage with the sales message and the rest of the marketing mix…as in a more mature sense.

Stewart: Mark, tell me about marketing in Scotland…where is it?, Where is it going wrong?

Mark: well, marketing in Scotland is probably best described as a collection of SME’s…hundreds of small companies making a great contribution to the Scottish economy…over £330m at the last count, of gross value add. So it’s an important aspect of the economy and it creates a great deal of added value to operators, businesses within the Scottish economy who use our services. So, it’s a very creative collection of small business doing exciting things.

Stewart: So, we have this sector which makes an enormous contribution to the Scottish economy for its size….How do you see it developing within the next five years?

Mark: I guess the whole issue that faces marketing in general is the fragmentation of the media. The opportunities, for small companies are fantastic as it allows us to pick up niche opportunities…but on the other hand we are seeing the disappearance of the broadcast media. ITV is struggling desperately, the newspapers…its well documented that circulation is going down dramatically and that makes reaching wider, broadcast audiences very difficult. However, the counter to that is, that there’s millions of opportunities arising on a daily basis from the media. My concern is that, as an industry being small and disjointed we don’t really have a common voice….and I think our government fails to recognise the added value that we bring to the economy in Scotland. I would like to see us engaging more closely with Government, finding ways for us to be helped as an industry to take forward that talent and to really exploit it to the full.