Marc de Swaan Arons opens the first global launch of the Real Growth study by describing why the institute was set up at all. His argument is that the familiar mechanics of growth have stopped working, and that the marketing function is paying for it in tenure and standing.
Frank van den Driest then takes the audience through the seven building blocks the research produced. Each one is introduced as a myth the study contradicts, and each is scored by comparing companies that outgrew their peers against those that did not.
Key findings
- The study is built as a contrast rather than a survey of opinion. De Swaan Arons is explicit that only differences between over and under performers were kept, and that the same method carried across the two earlier studies.
- The clearest illustration of the first building block is a hair care leader who holds three different market shares at once, depending on which boundary is drawn. Van den Driest uses it to argue that the measured market is a choice, not a fact.
- The LinkedIn contribution is the part van den Driest treats as new evidence rather than claimed behavior. It measures who people are actually connected to, and the gaps between the two groups are large.
- The seventh block scores worst in the quantitative model and is the one the presenters back hardest. They say so openly, and rest the case on the interviews rather than the numbers.
Nine months, and a village of contributors
De Swaan Arons frames himself as an ambassador for a much wider group. The work was done with WPP planners and consultants, with client partners who sat in on the interpretation, and with industry bodies including the Cannes Lions growth council.
The sample is stated on stage in three parts: interviews, a quantitative survey still running in one market, and the LinkedIn connection analysis. The presenters describe the survey as incomplete at the time of speaking.
The reason for doing any of it, he argues, is the position that moves first when growth stalls. He cites the marketing chief’s tenure against two other functions, and attributes the churn to unclear expectations rather than poor work.
The market you measure is the market you defined
The first building block sets itself against the idea that growth comes from taking share off a named rival. Van den Driest argues that over performers hold an abundant view of the market alongside the measured one, rather than instead of it.
The consequence he draws is about ambition rather than measurement. A three point gain looks bold inside a narrow definition and modest inside a wide one, and the wider frame also changes the routes to market a team would consider.
Two case studies carry the block. Adobe is presented as a company that made unpopular bets and held them, and Mars as one that redefined its category after listening to owners talk about their animals rather than about food.
Two models in the same month, and the beautifully dissatisfied consumer
The second block concerns willingness to run business models that do not resemble the core one. Van den Driest names two drinks companies that bought into unfamiliar models within weeks of each other.
The capability gap he identifies is financial rather than strategic. Marketers rate their own financial acumen highly, but he argues they are describing marketing return rather than the whole business case.
The third block borrows a phrase from an Amazon shareholder letter. Van den Driest argues that expectations set in one category are carried straight into every other, so the bar is raised by companies a brand never competes with.
What separates the two groups, on his account, is treating that as a standing habit rather than a project. He stresses removing friction over adding features, and uses Spotify’s staged additions as the illustration.
Culture is not DNA, and the connections show it
The three organizational blocks open with the claim that culture is fixed. Van den Driest rejects it, citing an acquirer known for rapid cultural change and Microsoft’s shift of incentives from products sold to client growth.
The quantitative profiles split cleanly on two of four types. Under performers cluster on process and control, over performers on innovation and empowerment, and diversity is defined as who sits at the decision table rather than as a headcount ratio.
For the organizational block he replaces the accountability question with a different image. Rather than redrawing responsibilities, over performers organize around small battles and behave like a responsive flock rather than a slow ship.
The barrier, on the evidence he cites, is internal. A Bain study of large company chief executives put the blame inside the building, and the study’s own numbers show few companies rate themselves well at removing those barriers.
Whole brains, and the snackable half hour
De Swaan Arons returns for the third organizational block. He reports that no one told the researchers they lacked data, and that the difference lies in pairing data with human insight and technology with creativity.
He is careful about what the block asks of people. The point is building teams that combine both capabilities, not asking individuals to become someone else, and it still starts from having the data at all.
His example is programming length. Linear television, on the figures he shows, varies its running times far less than a commissioner that owns the viewing data, and his own children watch the same volume in smaller pieces.
Humanized growth, and the line in the sand
The seventh block is about the stated reason for the work. De Swaan Arons argues that profitable growth is still the objective most companies put at the top, and that it fails as a source of energy inside the organization.
The measured difference is not in caring about top line growth, which both groups do. It is that under performers dwell more on the bottom line, while over performers define and measure their effect on people, customers and communities.
He then states the exception to his own method. The quantitative model gives this block the smallest share of explained growth, and he backs it anyway on the strength of what senior leaders said in interview.
The closing argument turns to the marketing role itself. De Swaan Arons points to a company that replaced its marketing chief with a growth officer from outside the discipline. He sets out a McDonald’s turnaround built around the same building blocks. He then names humility, empowerment and courage as the qualities the role now requires.
Scope and limitations
This is the Institute for Real Growth presenting its own research, delivered in 2019 by the study’s authors at its first global launch. Every figure quoted here is the institute’s own, described from the stage without a published methodology to check it against. The sample is stated as close to 550 interviews conducted over nine months. To that is added a quantitative survey of more than 1,500 responses from 73 markets, still open in at least one country at the time of the presentation. A LinkedIn connection analysis, which the presenter says arrived weeks earlier, is the third component. The over and under performer split is the study’s own classification, and the presenters note that the survey answers are claimed behavior. De Swaan Arons also concedes that the humanized growth block scores lowest in the model and is backed on interview judgement instead. This write up omits his passing remarks about a named head of state and about Brexit, which were asides in an argument about eroding trust in communication rather than findings. The source captions are auto generated and garble some words, including the study’s own terms for the two groups.
Source
This page summarises IRG | Real Growth study presentation New York, by Marc de Swaan Arons, Frank van den Driest, 2020-05-12.