At this year's Marketing Forum, former London 2012 marketing chief David Magliano showed  he is no stranger to such reflection by detailing the 10 things he wished he had known a decade ago. .

He started with the basics - how many marketers would have known how to build a business case 10 years ago? While it is a fundamental concept now, it is one that most marketers were slow to acknowledge. 'I can't believe the number of times I recommended action without a notion of the impact it would have on a client's business,' says Magliano, recalling his days in an ad agency. When he made the leap client-side and joined budget airline Go in 1998, he was entrusted with setting passenger fares ahead of its launch. Consumers in research groups had been asked about pricing, and it was discovered that,  not surprisingly, they did not like prices advertised 'from' a certain amount; they wanted to be sure of the cost from the outset. Without any real understanding of its implications, Magliano set a flat fare of £100 for every seat. 

While this was welcomed by passengers, it was a disaster for Go, as flights at less-popular departure times remained stubbornly empty. Magliano's pricing strategy lasted only a month, although it was predicted that it cost Go between £2.5m and £4m in missed revenue.

Magliano went on to point out that while most marketers are a social bunch, some can be shy, revealing something else he would have stressed to his younger self - the importance of making friends in the industry. 'You can't have too many contacts. You might need a reference on someone you're hiring, or a recommendation when looking for a digital agency,' he said. He also emphasised that within this there is room for some mutual back-scratching. 'If you do want to ask people for favours, you've got to have done favours for them first,' he added.

When pressed on those pieces of knowledge that would have been invaluable a decade ago, the longed-for insights soon come spilling out from some of today's other leading marketers. 'I wish I'd known how relevant it would be to demonstrate the commercial value of marketing,' says Mike Hoban, director of customer and brand marketing at Scottish Widows. 'The challenge today is to justify expenditure.'

A universal wish from marketers seems to be for an earlier insight into the importance of staff issues. While the notion of the 'employer brand' was still in its infancy in 1997, so, too, was a genuine understanding of employee relations. 'I wish I'd known that you should deal with staff problems quickly,' said Magliano. 'If someone resigns, don't delay in telling staff or clients - it could be much more damaging to tell them later.'

Patrick Allen, group marketing director at The Co-operative, is also wistful on the subject of staff. 'I wish I'd known about the power of people in the business, and how dependent a business is on its employees,' he says. For a company such as The Co-operative, customer service, and those who are expected to deliver it, drives much of the brand experience. Allen believes it is vital to create an environment where people can be at their best, and how important it is for recruiters to focus on attitude, rather than skills.

'You can pretty much copy a product - that's easy,' Allen continues. 'If you can get your team behind a vision and encourage it to be an ambassador for your brand, that is so powerful. That is where John Lewis Partnership has done so well. Business cannot survive on product alone.'

Yet, Simon Thompson, a former marketing director at Honda and Motorola, and now chief marketing officer at Lastminute.com, says product is key. 'It doesn't matter how good you are at marketing - if the product stinks, it won't sell,' he says. As a relatively new addition to the travel company, Thompson is aware of the accelerated pace of change. The effect of this is that skills can become out of date within 18 months, which was certainly not the case 10 years ago.

This can leave today's marketer hungry for knowledge and new talents. 'If someone from an agency who I don't know calls me, I try to find time to talk to them - I might learn something,' he says. 'I worry about becoming a dinosaur.'

Thompson argues that because marketers are learning continuously in an effort to increase their employability, it is not ideal for them to remain with one company, or even within one sector, year after year - needless to say, this is an insight he would have passed on a decade ago given the chance. 'Working in several companies and categories accelerates your learning,' he says.

Hoban agrees. 'Marketing has become so much more complicated - more channels, more complex consumers, more intense competition and greater scrutiny,' he says. 'What would have been enough to be successful in the 80s when I started wouldn't cut it today.'

Gary Bembridge, vice-president of global beauty care strategy at Johnson & Johnson, yearns for his younger self to have appreciated the basics. 'When you look at competencies, particularly among senior management, it is the core competencies that they get rusty on, such as market research terminology,' he claims. 'We spend time training them on the marketing fundamentals, such as negotiating skills.'

Naturally, a few tips on customer behaviour would also have been very welcome 10 years ago. 'I used to sit and read data all day, but it doesn't matter how much data you have on consumers, you cannot beat a positive personal conversation with them,' reveals Thompson. 'Consumers say they buy with their head, even though really they do so with their heart.'

The fickleness of the public was a lesson learned the hard way for Jacqui Hill, the outgoing household business director at Unilever. She says that if she had the chance, she would tell her younger self to be wary, that there is no such thing as 100% brand loyalty, and to be careful of research projects and focus groups, because 'consumers often don't mean what they say'. She cites the UK advertising for Unilever's Organics haircare range. While focus groups approved of the use of realistic images - echoed today in Unilever's campaigns for Dove - the public did not respond positively to the ads. The product line was ultimately delisted in the UK in 2005.

Magliano revealed that he wished he had known that it is acceptable just to meet expectations. 'Traditional marketing literature tells you to exceed them - you're then dealing with higher expectations,' he said. Go tried to deliver a better customer experience on a budget, and Magliano admitted it struggled to meet that promise. 'I'm not advocating that you should set lower expectations, just that people value certainty. A better policy is to do exactly what you said you would.'

Bembridge, meanwhile, regrets not appreciating the importance of total brand experience. 'I didn't think about how people would interact with our products 365 days of the year,' he says. 'That's why so many struggle with integrated communications. We've got to stop calling it that - just call it communications. When marketers talk about brand experience, they're talking about bought media, rather than all the touchpoints. In the FMCG sector, we don't do enough on total experience. In 10 years' time, we'll still be saying that.'

Understandably, many marketers wish they had seen the digital revolution coming. In Thompson's case, he would have wanted to know that the web 'would be an added channel to market and an enormous opportunity for traditional brands'. He admits: 'I thought it would replace everything rather than be an add-on. I think I called that one wrong.'

'I wish I'd known the power of digital media and the impact it would have on consumer behaviour,' says Allen. 'There was a slow burn in terms of changing consumer behaviour, then digital came along and suddenly it went through the roof.'

Bembridge cites digital as a key element in the power of buzz marketing. 'I grew up at Unilever and Johnson & Johnson believing in TV, with maybe a bit of print and promotions,' he admits. Now, he says, he knows how vital social media and independent sources are in generating brand buzz.

'If I can get products used by the right people in the right places, and independent people writing about them, that is very powerful. Look at Boots and its No7 anti-ageing beauty serum,' he says, pointing to the sales surge that followed positive reviews by an independent researcher in a BBC programme on beauty. Products were later sold on eBay while Boots struggled to re-stock shelves.

Marketers may often wish that they could go back and start again, but  learning from mistakes can be a valuable experience. After all, if Magliano had not learned how to build a business case the hard way, perhaps Paris would now be preparing for the 2012 Olympic Games.

David Magliano's Top 10 wishlist

• Knowing how to build a business case
• Ability to make a persuasive presentation
• Making contacts
• Dealing with staff problems quickly
• Importance of the business model
• Understanding pricing and how to use it
• Managing stakeholders
• Creating alignment
• Meeting, but not necessarily exceeding, expectations
• Understanding the difference between objectives and strategy

David Magliano's speech, '10 things I wish I'd known 10 years ago', was delivered on board the Aurora at The Marketing Forum,

Source; Media