Reflections from Connect Over A Cuppa with Andy Sherratt of SPA Professional Academy

Ask someone about the future of marketing today and I suspect it won’t be long before two letters appear in the conversation: AI.

Understandably so.

Artificial intelligence is changing how we create content, analyse information, understand customers and communicate with them.

But when Andy Sherratt joined us at Connect Over A Cuppa in March 2026 to talk about The Future of Marketing, one of the things I particularly liked about his presentation was that AI was only one part of a much bigger picture.

Andy identified six areas that will shape marketing’s future: strategy, products, brands and promotion, people, processes and AI.

It prompted a much more interesting question:

‘Are we in danger of becoming so fascinated by the technology that we forget what marketing is actually there to do?‘

Keep looking ahead – but be prepared to change direction

One of Andy’s early points was the need to combine long-term vision and plans with short-term flexibility.

I think that’s increasingly important.

Businesses need direction. We need to understand the markets we’re trying to serve, the customers we want to attract and where we want the organisation to go.

But the route can’t be fixed.

Technology changes. Competitors change. Customer expectations change. New markets appear. Established markets decline.

So perhaps the skill isn’t predicting the future perfectly.

It’s having a clear enough sense of direction while remaining curious and flexible enough to respond when the world doesn’t behave as expected.

Don’t just compete – question the market itself

Andy also introduced the idea of Blue Ocean Strategy.

In a “red ocean”, businesses compete within an existing market: trying to beat competitors and win a greater share of existing demand.

A “blue ocean” asks something different.

Could we create new demand instead?

That requires us to look beyond what our competitors are doing and question some of the assumptions our industry has become accustomed to.

• Who is our target customer?

• What do we offer them?

• How do we create value?

• How do we generate revenue?

• And what would happen if we changed some of those things?

Andy’s slide on business model innovation argued that meaningful innovation can come from changing two of these elements.

That’s quite different from simply asking:

“How can we sell more of what we’ve already got?”

Innovation doesn’t necessarily mean inventing something

Innovation is another word businesses use a lot.

But invention, creativity and innovation aren’t necessarily the same thing. Sometimes innovation is a new product.

Sometimes it’s a new way of delivering an existing product, or it might be a new customer group, pricing model, partnership or distribution channel. Sometimes it starts simply by experimenting.

That was another theme in Andy’s presentation: innovation and experimentation.

We don’t necessarily need to know that an idea will work before trying it.

We need a sensible way of testing it, learning from it and deciding what to do next.

Your next opportunity might come from somebody else

One slide I particularly liked focused on partnerships.

Andy highlighted collaboration, co-creation, supply chains, distribution chains and complementary organisations as potential sources of opportunity.

Businesses can spend an enormous amount of time looking internally for growth.

Perhaps we should occasionally look sideways.

• Who already serves the customers we want to reach?

• Who has capabilities we don’t possess?

• What could we create together?

• Where could two organisations combine their expertise to solve a customer problem more effectively?

Growth doesn’t always have to be built entirely within your own four walls.

Customers will increasingly expect products to fit them

The future of products was another interesting part of Andy’s talk.

Technology is making mass customisation increasingly possible – allowing individual or one-off products to be produced more economically.

Andy’s presentation suggested that developments such as materials technology and 3D printing could increasingly move organisations from simply being manufacturers to becoming design solution providers.

There’s a subtle but important distinction there.

Instead of saying:

“Here’s what we make. Would you like one?”

We start asking:

“What are you trying to achieve, and how could we create the right solution for you?”

That change in mindset goes well beyond manufacturing.

It can apply to almost any business.

Sustainability has to mean something

Andy’s slides also addressed sustainability – but importantly described genuine sustainability which benefits customers, organisations and suppliers.

He also posed an interesting idea: creating products that allow people to consume less but be more satisfied.

That’s a more challenging proposition than simply adding sustainability language to the marketing.

It asks businesses to think about the product itself, how it is produced, what customers actually need and whether value can be created without simply encouraging ever greater consumption.

For some organisations, that may ultimately become an important source of competitive advantage rather than simply a corporate responsibility exercise.

Stop selling and start helping

Perhaps one of the strongest messages from Andy’s presentation came in his section on promotion.

The future he described included personalisation, short-form video, social-media micro-communities and a greater recognition of the things customers genuinely care about.

But one phrase stood out for me:

“Helping customers find solutions, rather than selling to them.”

That’s a useful philosophy for almost any sales or marketing team.

Customers aren’t particularly interested in being marketed to.

They have problems to solve, ambitions to achieve, questions to answer and decisions to make.

The businesses that help them do those things become useful.

And useful businesses are much easier to buy from.

Marketing isn’t the marketing department

Andy then took that idea a stage further.

His view of the future included the possibility of no marketing department because everyone is involved, with employees acting as brand ambassadors and people across the organisation collaborating to understand and satisfy customers.

I think there’s an important point here. Your brand isn’t simply your logo, advertising or LinkedIn content. It’s also the person who answers the telephone, how quickly somebody replies to an email, or the engineer who visits the customer, the invoice that’s easy…or difficult to understand.

It’s how somebody handles a complaint, and the promises you make and whether the rest of the organisation actually delivers them.

Marketing may create the expectation. The organisation creates the experience.

And increasingly, customers can tell everybody else about the difference.

Turn your salespeople into educators

Andy described external relationships in similarly interesting terms:

“Educators, not sellers, helping customers find their ideal solution.”

Again, I think that’s a useful way to think about modern selling.

The best salesperson doesn’t necessarily need to push hardest.

They need to understand, and have sufficient expertise to explain. They need to ask good questions, and they need to help customers make better decisions.

That changes the relationship from:

“How can I sell you something?”

to:

“How can I help you make the right choice?”

Ironically, the second approach may ultimately result in more sales.

And then there’s AI…

Andy deliberately brought AI back towards the end of his presentation.

The possibilities are clearly substantial.

Businesses will have access to increasing amounts of customer information. Andy discussed passive data collection and the possibility of technology being used to understand people’s emotional responses and connections.

That raises some significant opportunities – and undoubtedly some significant questions too.

But perhaps the most important AI message appeared on one of Andy’s final slides:

“A tool for improvement – not a solution in itself.”

For me, that’s probably the most useful way for many businesses to approach AI.

Don’t start with:

“We need to use AI.”

Start with:

“What are we trying to improve?”

Can we understand customers better?

Can we respond more quickly?

Can we remove repetitive work?

Can we analyse information we currently ignore?

Can we personalise an experience?

Can we help our people make better decisions?

Then ask whether AI can help.

Technology becomes much more useful when it is attached to a real problem.

Perhaps the future of marketing is actually more human

There’s an interesting contradiction running through all of this.

The technology available to marketers is becoming dramatically more sophisticated.

Yet many of Andy’s themes ultimately bring us back to very human things:

• Understanding people.

• Listening.

• Building relationships.

• Creating useful solutions.

• Collaborating.

• Experimenting.

• Responding to changing needs, and helping customers make good decisions.

Perhaps the future of marketing therefore isn’t about replacing those things with technology.

It’s about using technology to become better at them.