The deck organizes the growth problem into three questions: what factors are restricting growth, how growth has become more difficult to maintain, and why key stakeholders are pushing back on growth.
Its conclusion is that a new growth model is needed, and it presents a tested and proven approach built with eleven WPP companies and practitioners.
Key findings
- On the demand side, the restricting factors are the loss of traditional barriers to entry, disruptors themselves being disrupted, and new players breaking the rules.
- On the maintenance side, the causes given are the BRICS economies running out of steam, market maturity, and the difficulty of maintaining strategic focus.
- On the stakeholder side, the causes are the transparency of corporate culture, decreased workforce loyalty, and societal pushback on environmental impact.
- Four further pressures are added: increased market volatility, zero-based budgeting losing its shine, explosive growth of direct-to-consumer commerce, and intermediaries owning the consumer, with Amazon and Alibaba named.
- The survey behind the material had 1,250 online respondents from 73 countries, across a wide sample of functions, levels, and industries.
Who answered
Marketing made up 46 percent of respondents, followed by general management at 11 percent, insights and analytics at 10 percent, sales and finance at 5 percent each, and communications at 4 percent.
By business model, 42 percent were business to consumer, with 29 percent business to business and 29 percent both. By seniority, a quarter were C-suite, 12 percent executive or senior vice president, 30 percent vice president or director, and 22 percent manager.
By industry, financial services and consumer packaged goods led at 12 percent each, followed by advertising at 11 percent, consulting at 9 percent, technology at 6 percent, and manufacturing at 5 percent.
What the deck asks marketing to do about it
The argument on leadership is a return rather than a leap forward. It asks marketers to move beyond advertising and past shiny digital toys that distract, back to the basics of marketing, making markets, and driving real business growth.
The model itself lists an abundant market view, multiple business models, ever-evolving experiences, open culture, an anticipative organization, whole-brain intelligence, and humanized growth. The qualities of the new growth leaders are summarized as connected, empowering, visionary, and humble and courageous.
The closing ask is personal: put yourself in humanizing growth, take an honest look at where you are now, design your real growth journey, and write your growth story. The deck adds that there is no need to go at it alone, and offers benchmarking scored per building block.
The universal shape of a growth journey
The deck claims the characteristics of real growth journeys are universal, and lists them: taking up the challenge of change, embracing adversity to drive progress, the power of continually learning, practical strategies to make things happen, and developing through fun and play.
The remaining characteristics are outward-facing: connecting with the world around you, caring for others to enrich your own life, the strength we get from others, diverse and surprising sources of inspiration, and embracing diverse cultural roots.
Scope and limitations
The deck reports the composition of the sample but not the margin of error or the fieldwork dates, and the growth restrictions are presented as slide headings rather than as measured results.
Source
This page summarises WPP Brazil Findings, by Initiative for Real Growth, 31/01/2019.