This is the founding program description for the Initiative for Real Growth. The problem it names is commercial: clients are finding growth difficult, new chief growth and chief commercial officers are running holistic marketing transformations, and consultancies are encroaching on marketing through their C-suite relationships.
The proposal is a thought leadership initiative that bundles the network’s best thinking on what drives real growth in strategy, structure, and capability, and turns it into a benchmarking tool and framework.
Key findings
- Real growth is defined at the outset as sustained business growth that benefits both the top and bottom line and all the company’s major stakeholders.
- The method builds on Marketing2020 and Insights2020, adding WPP data assets including BrandZ, Wavemaker, and WorldPanel for extra rigor.
- The interview program was designed to double as client engagement. Qualitative stakeholder interviews were to be led by client-facing partners globally, with several hundred completed by mid-June.
- The plan set a launch date and a launch stage: findings presented by Sir Martin at Davos in January 2019, followed by an immediate network-wide roll-out.
- The name change was conditional from the start. If by mid-2019 the initiative was recognized as driving significant competitive advantage, it would evolve from the WPP Initiative into the WPP Institute for Real Growth.
Who was to run it
The initiative was led by Marc de Swaan Arons and Frank van den Driest, orchestrated by a dedicated Kantar Consulting Horizon team of 15 senior client-facing advisory leaders, working with around 25 WPP thought leaders from the major operating companies.
Governance was to be split between an external advisory board chaired by Sir Martin Sorrell, with academics and growth experts from client-side, financial, LinkedIn, and Spencer Stuart backgrounds, and an internal steering committee of operating company CEOs.
The partner list drew on existing Marketing2020 and Insights2020 relationships, expected to include the ANA, AMA, ESOMAR, ARF, the 4As, Saïd Business School, Wharton, the Financial Times, and Harvard Business Review.
The nine month plan
April was for internal communication and securing participation. May was for expanding the team with thought leaders and external partners, and defining the scope as everything CMOs, chief commercial officers, and heads of retail can influence.
June brought the first global face-to-face workshop at Cannes, with client workshops on preliminary interview findings on the Wednesday and a thought leadership workshop on the Thursday.
July and August were for desk research and building the quantitative survey, which went live in mid-August and ran to the end of September. Analysis began as the survey closed.
October brought the second and final full team meeting, with preliminary survey results discussed with members of the ANA board of directors and a delegate workshop to gather feedback and seed interest.
November was for integrating the interviews, survey, and desk research into a data validated model called the Framework for Real Growth, with case studies and a key findings deck. December was for final reporting, rehearsal, and building the benchmarking tool.
January was for the global launch with a client and prospect activation plan, introducing the benchmarking tool so clients could size their own opportunity and decide what to prioritize.
What participants were expected to get out of it
The end result is described as non-negotiable: by December 2018 every participant would have a fully holistic client-side understanding of where the market is going and what it takes to drive real business growth.
Participants were to do the work themselves, running vision interviews, desk research, case studies, survey design and analysis, benchmarking, and the communication of findings inside and outside the company.
The expected returns are listed as reputation as a growth solution partner, solutions and capabilities that drive future revenue, connections between consulting resources and the wider network, a shared perspective on the market, and acceleration of horizontal working.
Scope and limitations
The document says plainly that this is an early stage plan. The details are given for planning purposes and were expected to change, most appointments were unfinalized, and the partner list was still to be confirmed. Out of pocket costs were expected not to exceed 750,000 dollars.
Source
This page summarises The WPP Real Growth Initiative, by Marc de Swaan Arons, Frank van den Driest, April 2018.