Marketing as an engine for growth and career development issues: Your Marketing Week
At the end of every week, we look at the key stories, offering our view on what they mean for you and the industry. From the CMO of Carlsberg’s assertion that marketing is a growth driver, not a cost centre, to the impact not having influence over all 4Ps is having on career progression, it’s been a busy week. Here is my take.
Probably the best quote of the week
“Marketing is an engine of growth. It’s a growth driver, not a cost centre.”
And the award for the most inspirational quote of the week goes to…. Yves Briantais, the still relatively new CMO of Carlsberg’s house of brands.
All smart, right-minded people know this to be the case, in theory. We have reported enough on marketing-led business transformation over the years.
The reality, of course, is marketing is seen by many outside of marketing as a discretionary expense.
But, as Briantais points out, that doesn’t need to be the case. But you have got to earn it. “It’s not about saying it, it’s about showing it,” he adds.
You might argue that it’s easy for the CMO of one of the biggest players in a B2C category, where success is driven by brands that retain a price premium. More so, perhaps, than the CMO of an engine components firm (apologies to any front and centre in business critical decision making) but that doesn’t mean Briantais is resting on his laurels.
He tells my colleague Niamh Carroll that there’s investment in the team to bolster commercial acumen, but more impressively and importantly, an appreciation of what really matters, and what marketers should be judged by.
“The ‘why’ in marketing is not to deliver communication, that’s a ‘what’. The why is growth.”
And what is meaningful growth? Profitability.
“If a marketer thinks profitability is not his or her job, there’s an issue,” he says.
Some might cry that this is a statement of the bleeding obvious. But that doesn’t make the sentiment any less necessary.
If marketing is to become the growth engine that marketers want it to be, the role needs to be recontextualised and measures of success reconsidered.
Let it P
Elsewhere this week, more discussion of marketers over-indexing on the “what”. Specifically, P for promotion.
For those who might have missed our reporting earlier this year, our Career & Salary Survey of more than 3,500 marketers found the majority had control over promotion, but significantly fewer over price, product or place.
We looked closer at the consequences of this on career progression and influence in the article linked to below. The need for at the very least influence, if not control, should be apparent to all. Inflation is creeping back up across the world, which joins the dots between price and promotion more prominently, while the supposed “voice of the customer” should not be second fiddle to others on product and how and where you show up.
The case for marketers to reclaim the marketing mix is clear, but not easy to pull off. Especially if they have grown up in their role only dealing with promotion. As the brilliantly blunt Jon White says in our article: “If marketers are not growing up having been exposed to pricing, how could they lead pricing? It’s self-fulfilling.”
He adds: “As marketing leaders, we have a responsibility to have this debate with the industry and with the function, and go, what are we going to do about it?”
It’s a challenge for all. Yes, marketers have got to earn it, and their marketing leaders have to invest in financial literacy. Training bodies and academic institutions need to play their part in not marginalising marketing to the promotional periphery.
The wrong kind of growth
The marketing services industry is quick to bemoan any industry barometer that shows budgets in decline as an example of how marketing is the aforementioned cost centre. But eyebrows are also raised when growth doesn’t take the shape preferred.
The latest IPA Bellwether report found marketing budgets had been revised up in the second quarter. Which might be cause to see green shoots of recovery in an ecosystem hoping for an upturn. But the increase was being fuelled not by what the IPA classes as ‘main media’ but by data-driven, direct channels that take in performance activity as well as traditional direct mail, and sales promotion.
On one hand, entirely predictable, in keeping, as it is, with the pressure for quick wins in a challenging economy for most. But also cause for concern to those who want to see investment continue in brand to maintain equity, and pricing power as inflation rises.
A question of influence
The battle for balance between brand and performance will continue. Elsewhere, ‘main media’ budgets (TV, radio, cinema, etc) are and will continue to come under pressure from other means that CMOs and CEOs have determined more impactful.
Example of this came from news this week that Premier Foods is to step up its use of influencers. Following the announcement of its first quarter results, CEO Alex Whitehouse told analysts money would be invested in influencer activity as part of a wider effort to make marcomms activity more “engaging”.
Whitehouse’s comments follow those of Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez, who announced earlier this year it was stepping up influencer activity to mitigate consumers’ “default suspicious” attitude to marketing communications methods.
Away from influencers, Mastercard CMO Raja Rajamannar recently told Marketing Week that he was “shocked” that more advertisers haven’t gone further into experiential, as it has. “I know for a fact that advertising is not working the way it used to in the past,” he added.
Whether they are right or otherwise on trust and the impact of traditional means of marketing communications now and in the future, more money will be spent on different means to reach and persuade, with an inevitable impact on ‘main media’.
The week ahead
We will be speaking to the marketing boss at one of the world’s biggest tech brands next week and revealing data about the current state of marketing recruitment.
