Looking to get an MBA in marketing? Don't.
Marketing's biggest success so far is probably the MBA.
If you caught the Madison Avenue flu, good luck escaping an MBA. And a boring career.
It's tough to be a marketer. All marketers will convince you of that. Hence, anyone who thinks about a career in marketing starts with the dream of pursuing an expensive MBA at preferably an Ivy League institution. The next step, of course, is a plush job at a big brand. And on goes the merry-go-round till you find yourself in a dead-on-arrival desk job that comes with the perks. Except, it has nothing to do with marketing. What went wrong?
Here's the thing. MBA promises a marketing education and it delivers on it.
But while you are in the program, you are never taught how to build a marketing brain.
Why do I insist that a marketing brain is different from a marketing education? For the same reason that knowing how to swim in the ocean is very different from reading 15 books about swimming in the ocean. In many careers, structured instruction and training are important and necessary.
Like doctors. We don't want doctors anywhere near a human on the operation table if they didn't learn and practice it in the classroom.
Marketing is the opposite of medicine. It requires one to constantly unlearn what they know, accept unexpected outcomes as par for the course and the punishment for following the beaten path can run into millions of dollars for the brand and a career or two for the practitioners. A marketing MBA all but ensures that for most people.
MBA in marketing is actually a master's in the history of marketing.
There probably aren't many organizations that care about whether you know the 5Ps or 7Ps of the marketing mix. Instead, they care about you being able to generate hypotheses at scale and continuously test them. A marketer's worth is inversely proportional to the size of his intellectual ego.
The only ones who do well over the long term are the ones who change their mind often and chisel away at the strategy every single day. The ones who treat their brand narratives as concrete tend to drown with it.
MBA adds dead-weight to your marketing career
Imagine doing a 100-meter sprint.
Now, imagine running with your eyes closed and your legs tied together because you were told in college that it's how Henry Ford did it. This is what's likely to happen to you after you are done with the MBA.
For a profession where everyone is making up things on the go (no, really!), it's futile and counterintuitive to learn obsolete frameworks. What worked for manufacturing enterprises in the industrial age definitely won't work for that cryptocurrency startup or the cool new health-tech company.
The composition of the business has morphed. Marketing course curriculums just haven't.
MBA in Marketing is a terrible financial decision
Are you willing to bribe someone Rs 50 lakh for a chance at a good job?
That's the tradeoff you'll be facing when you go for the MBA, no less in marketing. At a time where underemployment is peaking, adding a degree isn't going to help your job prospects much if you've no demonstrated history of producing outcomes.
Also, MBA is expensive.
It can cost anything between Rs 20 lakh to Rs 80 lakh per year of education depending on the university, location, exchange rates, and living expenses. Yes, student loans are cheap but even with a 0% interest rate, you still have to return the money on strict timelines. Think about it.
The cost of the program is just the beginning. The biggest cost associated with an MBA is actually not the cost of the MBA but the opportunity cost (you don't need an MBA to learn this).
By committing one or two years of your life, you will lose out on not just the arguably more valuable work experience in marketing but the money you would have made from it too. As a result, the MBA will cost you in the following ways:
Time: Two years are 100+ weeks of voluntarily deciding to not do marketing to be able to do marketing later.
Money: Tuition, interest on the loans, and the salary you lose out on while you're enrolled.
Opportunity: If you are expecting an entry-mid-level marketing position after your MBA, you'll anyway get it without the MBA if you're smarter than average and have a demonstrable skill. One skill is enough. It could just be PowerPoint.
Growth: Marketing isn't learned in the institutions (ask the graduates!), it's learned on the job. So your learning curve will still technically start from the day you leave MBA. Skip the drama and get a headstart instead?
Choices: Most of the people who do MBAs take a lot of debt. And then, they voluntarily choose to be chained to terrible career choices because they have the EMIs to pay. Marketing is a volatile career, you could make the money back in a year or it could take ten to just pay off your student debt. If it's long, you'll be confined to choosing safe companies and roles thus eliminating any possibility of a non-linear growth curve that involves considerable risk.
Don't start the sprint with your hands tied behind your back.
If all this hasn't convinced you to not do an MBA, defer it for a year at least. Find an entry-level marketing position in a fast-growing company, take responsibility, and learn on the job. After a year, if you are still dreaming about an MBA, come find me and I will write and edit your submissions.
Learning is never a bad idea as long as you don't have an ROI equation attached to it.
PS: This post is mostly written from individual experience and 100s of conversations I have had with peers and seniors. The argument mostly applies to people who are young, not born with a silver spoon, and looking for a contrarian perspective.
I have the same respect and admiration for those who have or continue to do MBAs or other masters in marketing. I hope to learn from you if you volunteer the time. :)