The study starts from a claim that traditional business growth formulas are lacking and that marketing has lost influence. Its answer is Humanized Growth, described through seven building blocks and measured across four stakeholder groups.
The evidence base combines qualitative and quantitative work with machine analysis. It draws on more than six hundred and fifty qualitative inputs, more than four thousand five hundred quantitative responses across markets and functions, an artificial intelligence analysis of more than three thousand five hundred growth publications, and behavioral analysis of more than three million LinkedIn members.
Key findings
- On abundant markets, the gap in spotting and choosing the right wave of market development runs from eighty-six percent to thirty-six percent.
- On multiple models, the difference is a willingness to accept new business models, at seventy-one percent against thirty-nine.
- On evolving experiences, eighty-one percent against thirty-two focus on eliminating friction and delivering ever-evolving experiences.
- On anticipative organization, marketing in overperforming companies has three and a half times more connections with other functions and five and a half times more with senior leaders.
- On growth ambition, top-line revenue is everyone’s first priority, but the second priorities diverge. Bottom-line profit indexes at 130 for one group against 85 for the other, and impact on people at 120 against 76.
- By 2020, seventy-eight percent against four percent reported a significant shift to Humanized Growth, and sixty-five percent against eleven reported increased chief marketing officer influence on growth.
Markets, models, and experiences
The first building block is abundant markets. Overperformers look beyond conventional sources of market data, and the deck names Nielsen, Amazon and Kickstarter together. The capability that matters is assessing and understanding market developments, where the split is eighty-six percent against thirty-six. Mars moving from pet food to pet care is the worked example.
The second is multiple models, described as playing chess and checkers at the same time. What distinguishes the groups is a willingness to accept new business models, seventy-one percent against thirty-nine, illustrated by a move from supermarket shelves to cafes and subscription models.
The third is evolving experiences, summed up as being always beautifully dissatisfied. Eighty-one percent against thirty-two focus on eliminating friction and delivering experiences that keep changing.
Culture and organization
The fourth block is open culture, where overperformers are said to rewrite the culture script. Two behaviors separate them: building an ecosystem with complementary partners, at sixty-seven percent against thirty-nine, and more diverse strategic decision making, at seventy against forty-five.
The culture that delivers evolving experiences is described in one phrase, innovation, change and entrepreneurship, which carries an overperformer index of 133.
The fifth block is the anticipative organization. Competitive organizational agility splits sixty-eight percent against sixteen. Effectively removing internal barriers splits fifty percent against twenty-four. Integrating marketing and sales for e-commerce splits sixty-eight against thirty-seven.
The connectivity finding is the sharpest one in this block. Overperformers show three and a half times more connections with other functions and five and a half times more with senior leaders, both horizontally and vertically.
Whole brained, and what growth is for
The sixth block is whole brained, meaning technology and human creativity together. The ability to attract whole-brain talent splits sixty-five percent against twenty-five. Putting data and analytics at the core of strategic decision making splits sixty-six against thirty-six. Marketing creativity sits at fifty-nine percent.
The seventh block is Humanized Growth itself, and it is defined by what a company sets as its growth ambition. Top-line revenue is close to universal, indexing at 98 and 93. The divergence is underneath: bottom-line profit indexes at 130 for one group against 85, and impact on people at 120 against 76. Cisco moving from a product focus to what it called the People Deal is the example.
What the pandemic changed
The study was updated after the pandemic began. Its reading of the moment is that the future is unknown and existing systems are being questioned, and that attention has moved. Before, the focus was customers and capital markets. After, colleagues and community entered the frame.
The deck places that in a longer arc, from 2008 through the 2018 letter by BlackRock’s chief executive arguing that every company must show how it makes a positive contribution to society, to the 2019 statement by the US Business Roundtable.
For marketers, the implication is set against the documented crisis in the role, including the chief marketing officer shuffle of 2018, a perceived over-focus on communication and on distracting digital tools, and a judgment that the role is insufficiently commercial. The counter-argument is that chief executives need the help, that this is make or break for purpose, and that empathy has increased.
The 2020 update reports movement on both counts. Seventy-eight percent against four report a significant shift to Humanized Growth, and sixty-five percent against eleven report the chief marketing officer playing a more important role in growth.
The exercise
The session ends by turning the framework into a self-assessment. Participants take five minutes to score their own organization on the seven blocks, thirty minutes to discuss the best and worst scores, then choose their biggest recommendations before a plenary discussion.
Scope and limitations
The paired percentages throughout the deck are presented without labels on the slides themselves, so the two groups being compared are identified only by the surrounding overperformer framing. The 2020 figures come from a separate IRG survey of chief marketing officers rather than from the original study.
Source
This page summarises Driving Humanized Growth: Real Growth Study Results, by Marc de Swaan Arons, 2021.