"Marketing is about being able to understand the market environment and the opportunities that exist, " explained Tom Trainor, chief executive of the Marketing Institute of Ireland. "It is also fundamentally about developing and bringing to the market fresh propositions that the market is willing to pay money for."

In smaller companies, where management tends to multitask, marketing may be subsumed into the overall management mix.

But that does not mean that it is not taking place . . . it is simply happening throughout the business. Larger companies, on the other hand, recognise the need to have delineated marketing structures and strategies in place . . . which is why there are some excellent career opportunities to be found in the discipline.

Thus, a person might begin their career as a junior marketing assistant, working their way up to marketing executive. From there, they might become a product manager, moving up to marketing manager and eventually to marketing director. Or, alternatively, people could opt for a career with one of the marketing agencies, which will have its own career path.

Because of the nature of the business in Ireland, and because of the long history of the Marketing Institute of Ireland, there is a fairly bespoke route into marketing . . . this is not a career that people tend to fall into.

Indeed, the Institute has, over the years, pioneered education in marketing, and, from the early 1960s, it offered a Diploma which essentially set the standards for the discipline in this country.

"Most of the senior people in marketing in this country have gone through the Institute Diploma, " said Trainor. "Our mission has been to develop, in a broad sense, marketing education in Ireland. And we have been successful . . . you can see that through the uptake of marketing by third-level institutions. Indeed, marketing is now ubiquitous throughout the third-level colleges of Ireland, either as a business studies course with marketing as a specialism, or as a marketing degree in its own right."

Of course, you can educate people up to a point, but to be truly successful, people need to have an aptitude for the discipline. And although these skills sets can vary, in general people should be analytical, with the ability to spot trends.

"Employers will expect people to be able to piece together fragments to form a complete picture of the market, " said Trainor. "But those are not the only skills that are required. We beat this drum constantly, but it has to be said that people in marketing needs financial skills, and need to know the numbers in the businesses in which they are involved. In marketing, you can't just leave the numbers to the accountants."

There is also a creative side to marketing, although this is required more of the agency side of the business.

The upside for people in marketing is that, given the mix of skills required, marketing professionals often find themselves very much a part of the senior management team in a company.

"Companies that are marketing-led tend to be very successful, " said Trainor. "Take, for example, the C&C Group, which is led by the classic career marketer Maurice Pratt, who spent his formative years in marketing. Only last week, he won the Institute's All Ireland Marketing Champion award, which is the premier award that we give. And we did this because of his impressive performance as chief executive of the C&C Group."

Indeed, housewife's choice Pratt is a good example of how far up the food chain a person with genuine skills as a marketer can travel . . . and a good example of how marketing feeds into the overall management mix.

"When you get to the mid to upper end of marketing, the sky really is the limit, " said Trainor. "This is because top businesspeople never stop marketing.

They could have gone on to form a start-up company, or they could have risen to the position of chief executive, but whatever they are doing, they will be using their marketing skills throughout their business."