What bees can tell us about the role of marketing

Brian Carruthers

Within companies, marketing is often seen as a cost rather than as a part of the value creation process, but there are useful lessons to be learned from nature – and bees in particular.

In the course of their daily grind, few marketers will pause to consider the finer details of economic theory or appreciate the bigger picture of capitalism. But taking time out to do so is instructive, especially if that time is spent with Rory Sutherland discoursing on bees. 

At the Festival of Marketing’s Fast Forward event, the vice chairman of Ogilvy was musing on the notion of capitalism and how, in his view, it has become distorted through financialisation – and what that means for marketing.

An economics primer 

Mainstream economics, he said, “is incredibly hostile to marketing”. That’s because the...

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