This session was delivered at Meta in London in May 2024. It sets out the case that stakeholders have become louder, more demanding and more powerful, and that this is a business opportunity rather than a threat.
The argument runs from evidence to leadership. Revenue growth is shown to rise with sustained value for all stakeholders, chief executives are shown to see marketing as owning the growth agenda, and the Da Vinci leadership profile describes what the leader who does this looks like.
Key findings
- Average topline revenue growth against direct competitors over three years climbs steadily with how well a company delivers sustained value for all stakeholders, from 3.87 at the bottom of the scale to 5.87 at the top, on a base of 651.
- Companies differ sharply in whether they read stakeholder value creation as an opportunity or a risk, with the two groups shown at ninety percent and fifty percent.
- Eighty-three percent of chief executives see marketing as owning the growth agenda.
- The gap in chief marketing officer influence is wide, shown as sixty-five percent against eleven percent, and the material also reports a forty-eight percent increase in tenure.
- The core move asked of marketing is to widen its object, from customers only to all four stakeholder groups.
The case for the opportunity
The level setting section describes stakeholders as louder, more demanding, and more powerful, and names them as colleagues, customers, community, and capital markets. It presents that shift as a business opportunity.
The supporting data is a single chart. Average topline revenue growth against direct competitors over the last three years rises across five bands of how well a company delivers sustained value for all stakeholders, from 3.87 through 4.83, 5.19 and 5.44 to 5.87, on a sample of 651.
Why the chief marketing officer
The claim for the role rests on perspective and skills rather than on authority. It is followed by the finding that eighty-three percent of chief executives see marketing as owning the growth agenda.
A comparison of how chief executives and chief marketing officers talk about growth is shown by counting classes of language: growth, stakeholder value, impact, and engagement.
The stated payoff for the role is threefold: increased influence, increased impact, and longer tenure. Influence is shown as sixty-five percent against eleven percent, and tenure as an increase of forty-eight percent.
What marketing impact means when the audience widens
Marketing impact is framed across think, feel and do. Think is raising awareness and shifting mindsets. Feel is building a sense of belonging and passion. Do is enabling behavior change.
The same three-part model is then applied beyond customers. Colleagues, communities and the capital markets each become an audience for the same kind of work, which is what turns the framework from a communications model into a stakeholder one.
The Da Vinci leadership profile
The profile separates attitudes, meaning how you think and feel, from behaviors, meaning how you deliver outcomes, with purpose at the center. The attitudes are authentic, open-minded, courageous, optimistic, and future-focused.
Each attitude carries concrete descriptors. Authentic is approachable, humble, empathetic, vulnerable and transparent. Open-minded is curious, adaptable, inclusive and interested in diverse perspectives. Courageous is unapologetic, principled, grounded in reality, and willing to make big bets.
The behaviors are acting strategically, leading change, building talent, collaborating and influencing, and driving results. Acting strategically means filtering key decisions with business purpose, applying analytical rigor, ringfencing strategic initiatives, and holding short-term challenges inside a long-term strategy.
Leading change means providing the roadmap to a future-fit state, driving systemic transformation, navigating trade-offs with transparency and grace, and mobilizing a coalition of change leaders. Driving results means creating reciprocal stakeholder value, defining shared holistic measures for stakeholder impact, and tracking progress against them.
Purpose sits at the center of the profile and is defined by four questions: what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can monetize.
Partnering, and the exercise that closes
Partnering across the C-suite is illustrated through worked cases, including medical research and the strategy process, and through the attitudes it calls on: an ecosystem mindset, being inclusive and approachable, a positive outlook, and courageous visioning.
The session closes with five minutes of silent reflection on three questions: what partnering has worked best and why, where the participant could have more influence, and what gets in the way along with the interventions that would help.
Scope and limitations
The quantitative claims rest on one sample of 651 and are presented as correlations between reported stakeholder performance and self-reported revenue growth against competitors. Several of the paired percentages appear on the slides without their labels, so the groups being compared are not defined in this document.
Source
This page summarises Increasing CMO Impact, by Mariana Peneva, Marc de Swaan Arons, May 7, 2024.