In a recent blog post I noted that accountability is the cornerstone of the ANA. It is our driving force, our core mission, our reason for being. And the table was certainly set for us earlier this month at the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference where presentation after presentation demonstrated that the underlying theme was most definitely “Accountability.”
The topic echoed throughout the conference from presenters Larry Light of McDonald’s to Mike Winkler of Hewlett Packard -- everyone in attendance was in agreement that marketers are under intense pressure to demonstrate real value for their investments. Marketers are ravenous to deploy new and relevant accountability tools and are voracious to grow their brand building knowledge.
Naturally, you might ask, where is the CMO in this effort to capture marketing accountability? It’s our question too. So, recently we dug deeper into the world of the marketing organization and the CMO by teaming up with management consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton. We set out to assess the role and priorities of marketing organizations in a focused study.
One major theme that emerged was that the role of the CMO is poorly defined at an alarming number of companies and that companies expect marketing to provide measurable outcomes like ROI, but current metrics are not up to the task. Nearly 75% of marketers and non-marketers agree that marketing is far more important to corporate success than it was five years ago. But marketing is increasingly disconnected from the CEO agenda with top line growth (52%) being the primary focus for CEOs and marketing efforts focused more on tactical issues such as setting and maintaining branding guidelines (83%).
The landscape of marketing is clearly changing and the Annual Conference elevated this conversation. With each step we take, as an industry, we are sharing our best practices, identifying our goals and shaping new and improved ways to accomplish optimal business models. Jim Stengel, Global Marketing Officer for Procter & Gamble, and the newly announced chairman of the ANA, opened the gates and told attendees that accountability and ROI can be exciting and sexy.
While there is no one silver bullet out there, the collective industry is beginning to move aggressively to increment the level of sophistication and marketing intellectual capital to drive productivity and re-engage our core customers as we build our brands. Marketers are taking increasing control as they are:
* Analyzing internal data
* Conducting original quantitative, qualitative and local research
* Reviewing the use and deployment of key metrics
* Providing more in-depth analyses of syndicated data
* Implementing marketing mix modeling
* Constructing financial models with marketing metrics
* Using brand valuation analyses
Is the CMO really necessary? Absolutely. Marketing accountability and the CMO model are observably linked. The success of each depends on that of the other and it’s essential that this emerging CMO reach out and grab hold of the opportunities within the industry that will ultimately help to drive the marketing accountability agenda.
