Why do so few chief executives come from marketing backgrounds? This was the question rocking the boat at this year's Marketing Forum aboard the Oriana.
Research from PA Consulting Group and Cranfield School of Management, prepared for the forum, showed marketing to be a key driver of future cash within businesses - a high performance marketing role within companies adds in the region of 25% to shareholder value. Despite this, however, marketing is still undervalued and marketers, more often than not, don't sit in the driving seat.
Marketing's poor reputation was pinpointed as a main impediment to marketers reaching Board level, with a lack of capabilities and the wrong focus not allowing them the necessary exposure to drive their businesses more effectively.
PA Consulting's Peter Fisk interviewed more than 150 senior UK marketers and found marketers are working to drive revenue, rather than profit. His report found marketers to be perceived as creative rather than commercial, and operational rather than strategic.
Marketers' focus is often 'selling whatever they can' rather than focusing on the best sources of future cash.
Fisk found that, while marketers were not lacking the right intentions to deliver significant value within their businesses, their focus is on 'short-term' marketing skills - customer needs, competitive differentiation and driving revenue and growth - while lacking a broader view of their responsibilities.
Three-quarters of all marketers said they seek to drive volume-based growth, but only 13% seek to improve profit.
Yet profitability has twice the impact of volume on long-term shareholder value - the primary measure of business success.
So how can marketers break away from their conventional strengths and start truly influencing their businesses?
Companies need to move away from traditional marketing and towards high-performance marketing by connecting this activity with business results, thus, unlocking its real value.
This rationale is partly why accountability is now such a key area for clients.
But BT marketing services director Amanda MacKenzie says that accountability gives only incremental improvement, rather than a step change in the business. Instead, at BT she has focused on creating a community among marketing staff, ensuring that talents and experiences across the company are knitted together.
For Scottish Courage's marketing strategy and commercial director Steve McCarney, and Cadbury Schweppes VBM head John Good, breaking out of the traditional cycles that marketing departments were caught in was the challenge.
After finding his marketing plans ignored by senior executives, McCarney told delegates how he set about focusing on long-term plans which understood the value and potential of Scottish Courage's key brands, pushing marketing away from its implementational role within the company and towards a leading position.
Harvard Business School senior associate Dean, Professor John Quelch, reported that in some companies, marketing needs to market itself.
He advised marketers to push brands in terms of corporate reputation and risk-analysis in order to impress and influence the finance department and take marketing upstream.
Toyota marketing director Paul Philpott said he has helped rethink the car manufacturer from a price and revenue-driven operation 10 years ago to one with marketing at the core.
Under his command, the company introduced an extensive brand audit to work out the basis of the brand and its long-term direction. Toyota now has marketing, and its brands, at its heart.
Copyright Media Week 2002
This article originally appeared in Media Week.
