The premise is a mismatch. What marketing does is changing beyond recognition, but the marketing organization chart looks the same as it always did.
The study rests on 250 CEO, CMO and agency vision interviews and 10,231 marketing participants from 92 countries, and covers the role of marketing, marketing structure across global, local, agencies, partners and consumers, marketing capability, and CMO leadership.
Key findings
- The three winning brand characteristics are big insights, purposeful positioning, and total experience.
- The opportunities named are globalization, collaborating with consumers, social marketing, purposeful marketing, and the opportunity to influence business.
- The challenges are infobesity, touch point consistency, doing more with less, organizational silos, privacy risks, and the ability to stay current.
- Purpose is presented as a driver of business growth, measured through its impact on marketing KPIs including market share, lead generation, marketing efficiency, net promoter score, consumer engagement, revenue growth, marketing return on investment, and brand health.
- Capabilities have the strongest correlation to revenue growth, brand health, and marketing return on investment, with consumer understanding and insights, brand positioning, and brand strategy measured.
The context marketers were operating in
The opening argument is about exposure. Total transparency, CEOs apologizing publicly, and a generation the deck calls Generation Why are placed together as conditions marketing now works under, at both brand and corporate level.
Brand value in a digital world is framed as a trade-off between the depth of the value proposition and the breadth of touch points and experiences, with inconsistency and breach of privacy as the two failure modes.
Nike is used as the worked example of total experience, with an experience curve running from the price of the shoe through heart rate monitoring, running computers, brand image, tracking, motivation, integrating music, participating in a social network, and emotional association with running.
Organizing for growth
The first move is to connect. The line the deck uses is that marketing is too important to be left just to marketers. Marketing influence is shown rising between 2006 and 2013, with figures of 58 and 33 percent on working closely with the CEO on business strategy, and 38 and 19 percent on approving large growth-oriented investment decisions.
The second is to engage rather than engineer, starting internally. The statements measured are pride in the brand’s purpose, ensuring all employees are fully engaged with the brand purpose, and continuously engaging consumers and customers around it.
The third is focus, which the deck says drives growth, supported by communication. Agreement with supporting the global brand strategy falls steadily by level of the organization: around 80 percent globally, low to mid seventies regionally, and mid fifties to mid sixties locally.
The fourth is orchestration and integration, which means collaborating more closely with IT, finance and HR, and pairings such as a senior marketing and IT role or a CMO working with the head of HR. The structural change shown is a move from a functional chart with parallel silos to one where product, promotion, market research, advertising, public relations and strategy sit around the CMO.
New roles follow from that. The deck splits marketers into think, do and feel: analytics marketers, production and content marketers, and engagement marketers. Overperformers also work with more agencies, with figures of 53 and 33 percent for working with more than five.
What the CMO is asked to do
The five priorities are to lead by example in a digital world, engage the total organization, inspire and empower rather than control, ensure brand consistency throughout, and build marketing capability.
The framing shift the deck ends on is from digital marketing to marketing in a digital age, and capability building is treated as a growth driver, supported by a full week of training and a personal development plan.
The 2013 round tables were chaired by Keith Weed of Unilever, with Antonio Lucio of Visa, Beth Comstock of GE, Jon Iwata of IBM, Chris Burggraeve, and Rob Malcolm taking part.
Scope and limitations
This is a summary prepared for one company. Several charts are reproduced as figures without full labeling, and the deck gives the totals for interviews and participants without a breakdown by market or function.
Source
This page summarises Marketing 2020: Organizing for Growth – Summary for Barclays, by EffectiveBrands, ANA, SpencerStuart, Forbes, metrix LAB, Adobe, 2013.