CMO Roundtable: What Is the Role of Marketing?

In a recent HBR article, Jeff Immelt, GE CEO said  “marketing at GE was a place where old salesman go to die.”  His purpose for sharing this quote was to demonstrate how far marketing has come as a sophisticate element in driving the organic growth for GE.  Marketing at GE today is one of the three critical factors (taking risks and innovation are the other two) for growing GE at its record pace.

What is the role of marketing?

At ANA’s Annual Masters of Marketing conference, we asked three CMOs (Tom Haas – Siemens, Cie Nicholson – Pepsi, Becky Johnson – Brinker International) this question.  Their answers:

• Tom said marketing is a contributor of growth, a catalyst to get the right people to the table.  Marketing at Siemens has to drive sales, educate people as to what the sales process is and help the sales team deliver the right message to the sales influencers.
• At Pepsi, marketing is a growth driver explained Cie.  Marketing is all about driving consumer pull, innovation, differentiating their products through image and strong brand positioning.
• Becky Johnson (pictured above with Randy Rothenberg) explained that marketing has undergone a transformation at Brinker.  It was part of restaurant operations, but has now moved to being its own entity, responsible for communicating with the restaurant operators what value and difference Chili’s brings to the marketplace.

Marketing is different in each organization.  The key to being a successful CMO is to clearly define how the organization you work for sees marketing.  The three CMOs above have done that and that’s why each has, or will be in their position longer than 24 months.

New beat blogger Burt Helm at the BusinessWeek site Brand New Day shares his thoughts of the Annual Conference:    Day One    Day Two   Day Three

Comments

[Landor Mike]

The answer is simple really. The role of marketing is to create a sustainable advantage for the organisation. That is the primary purpose - beyond that very simple 'end' the rest is simply 'means'.

I find that clarity is the best policy and this is very clear - everyone gets it immediately. If we all in the business of marketing kept this uppermost we would be in better shape.