Article for Academics

The Difference Between Knowing and Teaching

Knowing marketing is the obvious requirement for teaching marketing. But do you know how to teach it? Have you formally prepared yourself as a business school professor?

We all arrive in academia differently. Some take a very direct path: they knew from the start they would dedicate themselves to academic life, and as soon as they finished their undergraduate degree, they pursued a master's and then a doctorate to focus on research and teaching the discipline. Others, with only a master's degree, dedicate themselves exclusively to teaching. And others, like me, came first from industry and later made the transition to academia. Regardless of the path taken, the question is the same for everyone: how do we prepare ourselves to teach the discipline?

Today, some doctoral programs pay more attention to this, and the AMA's doctoral groups address it as well, as do academic conferences. Additionally, as members of a university, we can take advantage of faculty development courses to learn how to teach and continuously improve.

AACSB, in its Standard 3, explicitly recognizes that knowing and teaching are distinct credentials. It classifies professors into four profiles — Scholarly Academic (SA), Practice Academic (PA), Scholarly Practitioner (SP), and Instructional Practitioner (IP) — precisely because disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical competence are not the same thing, and both are necessary in today's marketing and sales professors (AACSB International, 2020/2025).

When did I first ask myself whether I was ready to teach? When Dr. Jorge Pedroza, another outstanding professor and mentor, gave me my first opportunity to teach Advertising I. They handed me the textbook, and just like that, the rest was up to me. That's when I realized that knowing marketing is not the same as teaching it well — and that it is a constant intellectual and learning journey. This year I celebrate 30 years as a marketing and sales professor, and I constantly ask myself whether what I teach — and how I teach it — will truly help today's professionals. How many of us walked into the classroom for the first time without ever asking ourselves whether we actually knew how to teach?

The Professor the Market Needs Today

But like any discipline, it is not only about knowing the subject matter and knowing how to teach it. It is about teaching what the labor market demands today. That is the great challenge of marketing education.

The great paradox of our discipline is that it is in constant change. Every year we must learn and unlearn to avoid obsolescence and truly help future professionals by giving them the knowledge that will help them succeed. It is true that certain theoretical concepts endure for decades — value proposition, consumer behavior, brand strategy — but how to implement them changes constantly with new models, new technologies, and today, with the revolution of artificial intelligence.

The data confirm this constant challenge. According to the CMO Survey 2025, the primary challenge for marketing directors is demonstrating financial impact, under constant pressure from the CEO and CFO (Moorman, 2025). And according to LinkedIn, the three most in-demand marketing skills for 2026 are performance analysis, AI literacy, and social media branding (LinkedIn, 2026). How many of these topics are included in your course program or syllabus? In other words: are you teaching this semester what the market actually demands today?

The gap between academia and industry is not new, but it can widen or narrow depending on our approach in the classroom. Nyilasy and Reid (2007) analyzed this gap specifically in advertising, and their findings remain relevant: academia produces valuable knowledge, but it frequently does not reach the professionals who need it most — and sometimes it does not even reach the classroom. The Chronicle of Higher Education, in its 2026 Trends Report, identifies artificial intelligence, demographic pressure, and political pressure as the three forces redefining what it means to teach in higher education today (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2026). How do these forces affect you, and how are you adapting your course accordingly?

So we must ask ourselves: are we preparing professionals who will meet the demands of today's labor market? Because if we fulfill that mission, we are developing transformative professionals who will deliver the impact that the labor market and society expect.

We are all using AI, but how are we teaching our students to use it? Last October I presented a study on AI in my business program at the University of Central Florida to the program advisory council, and it is clear that they expect us to prepare students in human skills, business skills, and technological skills — especially AI, and above all, beyond ChatGPT. What I have been doing in response is learning to program with AI for marketing applications, both with OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude Code, as I shared in the previous issue of this magazine (Valdez, 2026, February). I invite you to visit our agents in the main menu of our site mercadotecniayventas.com.

The Impact Beyond the Final Grade: Life Lessons

In the cover article of this March issue I wrote about two teachers and mentors who shaped me — Professor Treviño and Dr. Ruy Martínez — and the impact they had on my professional trajectory and vocation (Valdez, 2026, March). That impact did not appear in any grade, but it did appear in life-transforming lessons about the discipline and about how to teach it.

Now I ask myself: does what I teach, and how I teach it, help impact lives and transform them in a positive way? According to Bain (2004), what distinguishes the best university professors is not necessarily their mastery of their subject or area of expertise, but their ability to create a learning environment that generates active student participation. The best academics do not teach their subject — they teach their students through their subject, through the active learning context they have created for that learning to take place.

Traditional lectures never appealed to me. Active learning did — where instead of simply walking students through the steps of a marketing plan, I ask them to develop it, present it, and defend it. I have experimented with many exercises and teaching techniques; several have not been successful, and that is fine. It is good to make mistakes as long as we learn from them and improve. But many others have worked. I have learned as much from my bad professors as from my good ones: what not to do, and what to do.

As educators, we can see in the classroom — especially in final presentations or competitions — how well students have mastered the material. But the most solid learning is what comes later: when six months, a year, or even more down the road, a former student reaches out with an email or a LinkedIn message to thank us for what they learned in class and for now seeing its relevance in their daily work. That makes a very special day for an educator. That is why we do what we do: to impact lives in a positive way, so that they in turn do the same in their professional lives. But what about those who never write? What about the students who left your class without finding relevance in what they learned? That possibility is also our responsibility.

Your Legacy in the Classroom

Daniel Pink reminds us that the most powerful motivation is not money or recognition — it is purpose (Pink, 2009). For us as educators, that purpose has a name: our students.

AACSB, in its Standard 7 on teaching effectiveness and impact, now requires business schools to provide evidence that their instruction generates real outcomes, not just publications (AACSB International, 2020/2025). The most important accrediting body in the world is already asking for measurable legacy. The question is: are you measuring the evidence of your impact on your students?

As I wrote in the cover article, we all arrive at marketing through some path — some by chance, others by conviction (Valdez, 2026, March). Those of us who enter academia have an additional responsibility: not only to practice the discipline, but to transmit it in a way that prepares others to practice it better than we could.

What is your transformative impact on your students? What knowledge, skills, or experiences will they remember from your class and be able to apply in their professional lives? What will your educational legacy be in the future careers of your marketing and sales students? How did you generate value in their intellectual lives?

That is the difference between knowing marketing and knowing how to teach it. You are already leaving a legacy in your students. I invite you to reflect: what is that legacy?

References

AACSB International. (2020, updated February 2025). 2020 business accreditation standards. https://www.aacsb.edu/-/media/documents/accreditation/2020-aacsb-business-accreditation-standards-feb-28-2025.pdf

Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Harvard University Press.

The Chronicle of Higher Education. (2026). The trends report 2026. https://www.chronicle.com/package/trends-report-2026

LinkedIn. (2026, February). Skills on the rise: Marketing 2026. https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-strategy/linkedin-most-in-demand-skills

Moorman, C. (2025). The CMO Survey: Leading marketing in a complex world (34th ed.). Duke University Fuqua School of Business, American Marketing Association & Deloitte. https://cmosurvey.org

Nyilasy, G., & Reid, L. N. (2007). The academician–practitioner gap in advertising. International Journal of Advertising, 26(4), 425–445. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2007.11073030

Pink, D. H. (2009). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. Riverhead Books.

Valdez, C. (2026, February). ¿Qué enseñar en Mercadotecnia y Ventas en la era de la IA? Revista Mercadotecnia y Ventas. https://www.mercadotecniayventas.com

Valdez, C. (2026, March). ¿Estás en mercadotecnia porque lo elegiste, o porque simplemente llegaste por casualidad? Revista Mercadotecnia y Ventas. https://www.mercadotecniayventas.com

Author: Dr. Carlos Valdez. Date: March 2026. Editorial assistance: Claude Sonnet 4.6 — proofreading, grammar correction, research and academic reference verification. Image generated with: Gemini 3 Nano Banana. Publication: Revista Mercadotecnia y Ventas. © All rights reserved. Revista Mercadotecnia y Ventas 2026. Reproduction without the author's permission is prohibited. Editorial syndication: This content is available for syndication. For licensing or collaboration inquiries, contact: carlos.valdez@mercadotecniayventas.com