This session takes up a question the Global CMO Growth Council had been asking: is marketing influence decreasing. It answers with the IRG Growth Study, a history of how growth itself has been defined, and evidence on where CMO influence now stands.
IRG states its own purpose in the deck: helping CMOs and other growth leaders drive more humanized growth by connecting them to peers, experts, and best practices.
Key findings
- The Growth Study ran from 2018 to 2022 on four evidence streams: more than 750 qualitative interviews, more than 5,000 quantitative responses across markets and functions, AI analysis of more than 3,500 growth publications, and behavioral analysis of more than 3 million LinkedIn members.
- The study output is seven building blocks of sustainable growth: humanized growth, abundant markets, multiple models, evolving experiences, open culture, anticipative organization, and whole-brained.
- The pandemic moved the stakeholder focus. Before COVID it sat on customers and capital markets. During COVID it pivoted to colleagues and community.
- The end point is multi-stakeholder value creation across all four groups: colleagues, customers, community, and capital markets.
- The measured answer to the opening question is that influence is rising. The deck reports increased CMO influence on growth at 65 percent, with an update noting CMO influence up 11 percent.
How the idea of growth got here
The history section, presented with Dr. Victoria Hurth, starts from Adam Smith and 1776 and the invisible hand, and from the claim that individual ambition serves the common good.
It sets against that an older definition of the discipline. Alfred Marshall in 1890 held that economics examines the attainment of wellbeing.
The line then runs through shareholder primacy and myopic self-interest to the absurdity of GDP as a metric, and to a license to grow that is being challenged.
The recovery is traced through Michael Porter’s Creating Shared Value in 2011 and conscious capitalism, with Body Shop and Patagonia as examples, and with the invisible hand giving way to visible hands.
The 2018 marker is Laurence Fink of BlackRock, quoted saying that to prosper over time every company must not only deliver financial performance but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.
What COVID accelerated
The pandemic is presented as an accelerator of trends already under way. The deck records an increase in empathy, a move from the individual to family reality, a shift toward serving rather than standing out, and a purpose-led posture.
The institutional marker cited alongside it is the US Business Roundtable.
What marketing does about it
The role described is the Da Vinci Growth CMO, with CMOs stepping up as an internal partner and using marketing’s window on the world to supply stakeholder insight.
Four pieces of work are named: inspiring purpose, community activation, employee value propositions, and total stakeholder message alignment.
The mechanism is a think, feel, do model: raising awareness and shifting mindsets, building a sense of belonging and passion, and enabling behavior change.
The closing frame is a marketing ikigai, and the closing question is put to the audience directly. If not now, when. If not me, who.
Source
This page summarises Sustainable Growth Marketing, by Institute for Real Growth, Saïd Business School, May 27, 2022.