The Final Pillar: The Marketing Organization

We have now reached the final pillar in the reinventing marketing series. I have discussed the importance of brand building, integrated marketing communications and marketing accountability in my previous posts.

In addition to those critical elements, einventing the total communications process also requires a reinvented marketing organization – one that provides true strategic leadership, consumer centricity and process efficiency. It’s an organization that makes every facet of marketing -- work brilliantly -- in service of the business’ overarching goals.

There are four critical dimensions to reinventing the marketing organization:

• Goal alignment
• Internal partnerships
• External resources
• The marketing professional

1. Goal Alignment

Businesses utilize their marketing function in different ways, for different purposes. It’s critically important that the marketing organization – and the chief marketing officer – be in alignment with the business goals of the enterprise as viewed by the CEO and the key line managers.

In most cases, they’re not, according to a study the ANA and Booz Allen completed in 2004. That study compared CEO priorities with chief marketing officer priorities.   

The CEO priorities were top line growth … speed, flexibility and adaptability to change … and customer loyalty and retention. In contrast, CMOs were most focused on branding guidelines … counseling divisions … and sharing best practices.  That’s a stark misalignment, don’t you think?

It’s vitally important that the CMO and marketing organization understand their mission and be aligned with the goals of top management.   In conjunction with the ANA, Booz Allen has identified a spectrum of six different roles that marketing can fulfill within a business.  They include:

• At the highest level, marketers can be Growth Champions – Here marketing is literally responsible for driving the company’s priorities – leading the development of its brands, products and new businesses.

• Next, marketers can be Senior Counselors – In this case, marketing serves as the primary advisor on marketing strategy to the CEO and individual businesses and leads major advertising, promotion and public relations campaigns.

• Another role is for marketers to be the corporate Brand Builders – Here the function provides marketing services – from communications strategy to creative output and campaign execution in support of the company’s key brands.

• Of course, we can be the Marketing Masters – In these organizations, marketing develops and leads large enterprise-wide marketing efforts and helps set the company’s priorities.

• In some instances, marketing serves as Best Practices Advisors – working with individual businesses to maximize marketing effectiveness and efficiency by bringing best practices to advertising, promotion, public relations and other activities.

• Finally, marketers can fulfill a Service Provider function – In this situation, marketing provides advertising, promotion and public relations services at the request of the company’s brand and product teams.

Booz Allen has created a helpful web-based tool (marketingprofiler.com) that enables marketers to identify where their function falls on this continuum and then take steps to increase the effectiveness of their current role – or migrate to a higher impact one.

Understanding exactly how the marketing function fits into the overall organizational structure as well as how its purpose is viewed by the CEO and other senior executives is essential.  In fact, Booz Allen recommends that the CMO and CEO create a “contract” that specifically sets forth the roles and expectations for success.

2. Internal partnerships 

In many companies, marketing has become disconnected from – and worse, adversarial with – other organizational functions, like finance, the supply chain and sales.

Marketers need to reach out and form strong partnerships with these departments – listening to them, educating them and accommodating their needs and goals.  Wachovia has done this extremely well.  As part of their five-year marketing reinvention process, they created what they call “an uncommon partnership of Marketing, Analytics and Finance” – a partnership that has transformed the company as a whole and focused upper management on “asking the right questions” about marketing and its role within the enterprise.   

3. External Resources

Externally, the marketing organization also needs to develop a new type of partnership with its outside agency resources.  Foremost, marketers should never cede responsibility for their programs to agencies or outside consultants.  Doing so is inappropriate – even irresponsible – in the reinvented marketing organization.  It risks being held hostage by an outside entity that – even in the best of circumstances – has different business priorities.

Marketers must control, drive and integrate the marketing process themselves…internally.  They must be the masters of marketing – or as the brilliant marketing consultant Peter Sealey puts it – the maestros of marketing.

To help fuel a constant flow of new ideas and approaches, the new marketing organization should have its own “R&D laboratory” with separate funding expressly for the purpose of exploring innovative marketing approaches. 

American Express has just such a function – a group dedicated to creating proprietary, consumer-relevant content with the charter of being completely platform-neutral.  It also has another group, the focus of which is to develop ideas that help extract as much value as possible from the company’s entertainment and media partnerships.

The result?  A continuous stream of innovative marketing approaches – as exemplified by a Jerry Seinfeld webisode … an Annie Liebovitz exhibit … a Martin Scorcese short film on reopening the Statue of Liberty to the public …and the Tribeca Film Festival. 

4. The Marketing Professional

Finally, reinventing marketing means rethinking what we require of a marketing professional.  The ANA published a wonderful article in a recent issue of The Advertiser, called “The World According to Jim.”  It’s an insightful interview with three great chief marketing officers and ANA board members – Ernst & Young’s Jim Speros, P&G’s Jim Stengel and Wachovia’s Jim Garrity.   Among other things, these gentlemen reflected on the characteristics they look for in the new marketing professional.  Here are a few:

Holistic, ‘system-thinkers’… customer-centric believers … innovators and dreamers … smart, effective communicators … results-obsessed managers… enlightened measurers … and great team leaders.

In a nutshell, the three Jims are describing the ‘renaissance marketers’ who will truly reinvent the discipline of marketing and lead it to a bright future.  They are the people, who will build the pillars of a new marketing profession.

Comments

Public sector tenders are open to challenge, you won’t be awarded the contract because they like you, they can only award it on marks, and can only mark what they see

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