What Makes Marketing Great (and What Makes Great Marketing)

By: AJ Schneider, President, AMA Indy

MARCON 2025

As the incoming President of AMA Indy, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what makes marketing great – and what makes great marketing. If you ask the Internet, you’ll get a variety of answers, but allow me to offer my view of the former.  

My daughter recently graduated from college with a marketing degree and I found myself a bit jealous of all the paths from which she can choose to pursue a career within the “marketing” arena. It’s an endless and inherently exciting list. More than ever, marketing offers possibilities that simply didn’t exist when I was a new graduate. 

The digital space, for example, has obviously exploded. Whether you’re someone who likes analytics and data, creating and managing a brand look and feel, developing the messaging or being the person responsible for managing the entire process, it’s that smorgasbord of options that make a career in marketing so enticing. 

And that’s not to mention the return of more traditional strategies that are beginning to stand out as analog differentiators in a digital world. Do you like designing the customer experience? Ensuring that customers are loyal to your brand? All subsets and complementary competencies of and to marketing. 

For those of us more senior in our careers, we’re well aware of the possibilities. But sometimes we just need a little encouragement to sharpen our marketing saws and make sure we’re well versed in the latest strategies and tactics related to all of the above that can help make our brands and clients more successful. 

So, I’d argue that whether you’re fresh out of school or the most seasoned marketing professional, the potential for lifelong learning, experimentation with new ideas and the ability to watch marketing seeds grow into successful campaigns is at least some of what makes marketing great. It’s a profession that allows you to be entrepreneurial, creative in your own way (regardless of subject matter) and it’s incredibly fulfilling when your ideas produce results.  

As far as what makes great marketing? Well, that’s where AMA Indy comes in. Our goal is to design programming and content that serves to inform, educate, spark new ideas and offer practical insights that will make your own marketing path more effective – for yourself, your employer or clients. And that’s exactly what we’re planning to do in 2026/2027. 

We’ll build on the tremendous momentum of AMA Indy in 2025/2026 (led by the fantastic and indefatigable outgoing President, Jaymie Shook and the entire AMA Indy Board). We’ll continue to bring you opportunities that will solidify your decision to pursue a career in marketing, and reinvigorate your thoughts as a senior leader in marketing. In either case, our goal is to help you make your marketing outputs even better. 

I look forward to another great year at AMA Indy and I’m glad to have you on-board. And, if you’re not a member, I’d encourage you to check us out. Come to an event, reach out to me or an AMA Indy Board Member to learn more about what AMA has to offer.