A recent article in Marketing Week asked ‘are we seeing the death of the Chief Marketing Officer?’ and cited findings from a survey by the Fournaise Consulting Group, a consultancy focused on improving marketing’s accountability. Its 2012 survey of 1,200 global firms found that 80% of CEOs don’t trust their Chief Marketing Officers, whilst 90% do trust and value the work of Chief Financial Officers and Chief Information Officers. Deeper analysis of the data suggests the confidence gap arises from a feeling held by 80% of CEOs that marketers are too disconnected from the firm’s financial realities.
These findings are not new and support numerous surveys and academic publications that have generated a popular notion that there was a mystical period in the 1960s when marketers were respected strategic decision makers and generators of wealth and growth, but that overtime, they have failed to adapt to a new, more competitive global economy, failing to ‘speak the language of the board’ and now risk being consigned to the dustbin of management history.
This is a dangerous and self-destructive discourse. Marketing leaders, above all, should refrain from dancing on their own graves. Marketing’s de-legitimisation matters a great deal to the only plausible escape from our economic difficulties: export-led growth to emerging consumer societies. Whilst I admire the trust CEOs place in Finance and IT directors – financial engineering, exotic debt instruments and new accounting systems are not going to generate innovation and growth. More than ever, we need to celebrate marketing’s capabilities of identifying and exploiting customers’ unmet needs and wants profitably, and on a global basis.
However, the naysayers are correct in that marketing’s de-legitimisation is removing it from the attention of the top team in many organisations. Credible surveys from commercial firms and academics show marketing’s limited influence in core areas of, for example, pricing and product development. Academic papers of recent years have foretold of the hollowing out of marketing, from a central strategic function, into dispersed communications adjunct to business units’ sales functions.
At the core of marketing’s angst is the perennial challenge that the function is unaccountable and therefore does not ‘deserve’ the funds it requests or to be at the top table. The ‘language of the board’ imperative directs managers and scholars to search for a magic formula that ties spending to a limited number of financial ratios (e.g. ROI).
Despite urban myths around the lack of marketing accountability, I believe that the profession has done more in the past 20 years than other management disciplines to develop metrics and link its activities to shareholder value. The real issue is not about metrics, it is about leading growth: breakthrough innovation applicable to global markets and taking the commanding heights of the emerging demand chain through branding, relationships and customer experience.
The risk is that the more we de-legitimise marketing, the more it retreats into a brand-communications shell and fails in its duty to inspire growth. In Cranfield’s first annual survey of marketing leaders, we found that social media and branding dominate marketing priorities. Working cross functionally, leading breakthrough innovation and building influence at the board to effect customer-led change are failing to top marketing leaders’ ‘to do’ lists. Whilst growth was the stated strategic imperative that the marketing leaders were addressing, further analysis of the data questions the real commitment to it, demonstrated by low to medium immediate priorities for exporting to the BRIC economies, ambitious innovation and fundamental reskilling. Instead, social media seems to be the preoccupation of marketing leaders. I fear, however, that our economic future is not to be found in a YouTube video that goes viral.
It is undeniable that ROI and other forms of financial analysis are core ingredients of the investment decision-making process and build credibility. No one can argue against the need for rigorous assessment of all spending and outcomes. Nonetheless, instead of dreaming of a future as financial managers, marketing leaders must generate unique customer insight, work with board colleagues to effect the changes and investment required to exploit customers’ changing needs and wants, and use market assets (e.g. relationships and brands) to capture profitable positions in new demand chains and solutions their firms create.
The strategic agenda for marketing is to revitalise our economies, our firms and our profession. Our obsession with media tactics, justified through short-term financial ratios, is damaging the profession. We will truly be loved when we champion an innovation-led growth agenda again.
