This conversation was recorded at the IRG Summit in Cannes, in the weekend before the Cannes Lions festival. Marc de Swaan Arons, the founder of the Institute for Real Growth, is interviewed about where the institute came from and where it is going.
The through line is a shift in who a business is run for. Financial stakeholders have dominated the boardroom. The claim here is that organizations which create value for all their stakeholders are the ones that financially overperform, and that this is what Humanized Growth names.
Key findings
- IRG began as the Initiative for Real Growth. WPP, under Martin Sorrell, wanted one view on behalf of the group on what was happening in the world and what would be expected of businesses and brands.
- The original research drew on 25 of WPP’s people worldwide, who spoke to CMOs at client and non-client companies as well as to trend and business analysts.
- The interviews were distilled into a leadership program, and the initiative became an independent institute. Google, LinkedIn, Tata, and Ipsos joined the collective. Over six years, 850 CMOs have been through the program.
- The institute is not for profit and describes itself as totally independent.
What the marketer brings to the room
The argument for marketing in the age of AI is not technical. De Swaan Arons says a marketer in a boardroom or an executive committee brings a different perspective, the human one, and that nobody else brings it.
He illustrates it with a photograph of a man in a long airport line. Executives read the data and conclude the man is miserable. The marketer asks to pivot the camera. If 300 people are queued behind him, he feels fine. Same data, opposite reading.
Where Humanized Growth came from
The concept came out of the first study, which asked what differentiates overperforming growth organizations from underperformers. Both care about top line revenue. The difference showed up lower down: underperformers were the ones obsessed with the bottom line.
Overperformers focus on people, and they define the group broadly. Colleagues, communities, and the customers a company serves are all stakeholders alongside the financial ones. Companies that serve the financial stakeholders for too long trip up, because the others push back. A union reopens a negotiation once the airline is profitable again. A community objects to what is dumped in its backyard.
Purpose as the entry point
IRG states its purpose as increasing CMO personal, business, and societal impact, in that order. The reasoning is that leaders spend most of their waking time at work. Someone who parks their convictions outside the office and expresses them elsewhere is doing something admirable, but the organization is where the leverage is.
Participants lead companies worth billions that reach a billion consumers, so there is an amplification effect. Aligning personal purpose, the work, and what the work does in the world is where the impact is greatest.
The program starts from ikigai. De Swaan Arons estimates that about 20% of arrivals could write their purpose in two lines. About half a day is given to stepping back and drafting it. The draft feeds a profile developed with Spencer Stuart, the Da Vinci growth leader, covering mindsets and behaviors. Purpose and behavior account for roughly 20% to 30% of the program’s total focus.
The practice predates IRG. At Effective Brands, the consultancy that came before it, the first hour of every meeting was about personal connection.
Humanized Growth in the age of AI
Google approached IRG about applying Humanized Growth to AI. The resulting study drew on roughly 30 hour-long CMO interviews and about 160 further participants across IRG’s programs.
The mood has moved in three steps. Discovery, then a year of experimentation across 2024, then opportunity. The image used for the 2024 CMO mindset was a hedgehog rolled up. The fear was less about AI taking the job and more about being called out by a CFO or a board for falling behind. By 2025 that had given way to comfort and a sense of opportunity.
Capability is the second theme. Organizations that invested early in three-week or nine-week team programs index far higher on already having AI capability, and that tracks with faster growth. The gap is quoted as an index of 250 against 49. Even so, 93% say their teams need more support and training, and 81% say the same of themselves.
The finding de Swaan Arons calls the big reveal is the human one. CMOs who treat AI as a business growth opportunity rather than a marketing opportunity are the ones overperforming. They also use AI in their own lives, for personal well-being, far more than underperforming CMOs do. They lead by example rather than by mandate.
The winners, on this account, are not the ones chasing cost efficiency. They are the ones whose AI applications amplify what makes their brand different.
What comes next: Marketing 2030
The interview closes on a new study, Marketing 2030, run through a coalition called the Marketing 2030 Collective. It asks what the megatrends are, how they change what stakeholders expect of business and brands, and what marketing strategy, structure, and capability are needed to win.
The method is the departure. The study will not be run as a black box with a reveal at the end. From day one in September it will generate learning, then expose it, discuss it, iterate on it, and improve it in the open.
Scope and limitations
This is a recorded conversation, not a published study. The figures are quoted from memory in the room and the speaker hedges them as he gives them, including the interview count for the AI study.
The speaker is describing an institute he founded and a study his own organization ran with a commercial partner. The claims about program outcomes are his own.
Source
This page summarises From Shareholder Value to Stakeholder Impact with Marc de Swaan Arons, by Marc de Swaan Arons.