Marketing functions - blast from the past

This is one of my favorite topics - trying to figure out what is really the purpose of a marketing function and competencies those function hold in different companies. What if your company's marketing function were banned to buy any advertising stuff from ad agencies for six months period of time? What would these guys do then and how would they spend their days?

Traditional marketing functions are actually marketing communications functions and to be precise advertising & media sourcing functions. Majority of marcom function's time is spent in buying communication stuff from ad agencies, media space, communication from communications agencies and research from research agencies (to research impact of communications). Their focus is not in creating more business or better business but in most of the cases to buy from and plan with agencies communication initiatives and  campaigns. One could argue that these two equal but another could argue that their core competence is to be professional buyers of advertising.

Internet has changed many things and it has changed landscape of marketing as well. Problem for traditional marketing function (as traditional function is defined above) with internet is that their focus and  competencies have been in one way communications "we tell you who we are and how excellent our products are". Internet is a business and customer interaction platform. Internet is about having relevant value to customers,  passion to interact - learn, listen, challenge, co-create with customers, digitize business & customer's processes, integrate own processes with customer's processes and many many other things with the main idea of being outside-in driven. All this applies to both B2C and B2B. Traditional marketing functions unfortunately are inside-out driven and they do not even acknowledge this. Fortunately for these guys internet has SEO/SEM activities which follows same working pattern as traditional campaigning added with few technical skills - no need to interact with customers.

Yes I know what someone might say - In many organizations only task given to marketing function is to communicate = blast leaflets, brochures, emails, print ads etc. with the idea that it will support sales. For this I am not sure whom to blame - incompetent sales director or incompetent marketing director or MD/CEO or all of them. Many engineering driven companies fall into this trap especially those with limited resources. On the other hand six month rule would save money for something else.

Yes I know as well that many might say - 6 months... It would destroy our brand awareness and value. Get real especially in B2B space. For example what is the actual lost of dropping out a few print ads in professional magazines - how many lost deals or measurable tangible drop in awareness? How about six months in B2C telecom operator business? Telcos are for sure active advertisers at least in Finland but I am not so sure about the impact and how the money should be spent. Problems they have in delivering hygiene level exceeding broadband service or running a smooth customer service should have higher priority than ads.

So how would you spend your six months? Even better - if head of marketing function is reporting to you what would you ask them to do during this time period?

PS. I have had several marketing roles in quite a few companies & roles where one of my responsibility area has been marketing