Great article from Tom Carter on ‘winning over CEOs’

Oct. 3, 2011 - PRLog -- Tom Carter points a very pertinent issue in his recent article (http://www.decisionmarketing.co.uk/?p=6017): marketing teams currently have little influence at the board table in most companies. The cutting costs policies following the crisis have especially touched the marketing activities, which efficiency remains difficult to measure. Marketing and customer point of views are not considered in top decision-making, which can turn into a weakness for the company: marketing teams have to encompass the whole company when presenting projects and campaigns to the board to gain their attention. Despite the constant evolution allowing to rate the responses of the online marketing campaigns, marketers still have to fight to be heard by the chief executives.

This wasn’t the case when I worked at Mars a couple of decades or so ago, last century; and certainly not when I was Marketing Director at Alberto VO5, now sadly engorged within Unilever.  The issues Tom raises go deeper because in my agency career I’ve witnessed good Marketing Directors, but weak CEOs and CFOs.

Here we are in 2011, the 2nd decade of the 21st century, and the marketing profession seems to decline in prowess, not grow.  Marketing is a corporate investment and a primary source of profitable cash flow if done properly.  Maybe even today it’s just too often misunderstood, or too often just not done properly.

This is a hugely sad state of commercial affairs because measurement and evaluation is at the heart of the ethos of direct marketing (http://www.smartermarketing.co.uk/default.asp), yet too many business people deride direct marketing as the source of junk mail and silent phone calls, and that above all is the very antithesis of a direct marketing professional who is steeped to the very atomic core of their dna in roi deliverance from right message at right time to right people for right reason with right response measurement metrics and cost per action ratios in place.

There is a solution to this utterly irresponsible nonsensical situation that Tom Carter describes, as many before him have done too.  There is a way any organisation can cut through the fog and impress any CEO worth their salt (don’t forget there are also a lot of average CEOs, and it needs a decent CEO to leverage marketing even if they know what marketing truly, really is).  

One definite answer worth seriously considering is ‘return on ideas’ (as opposed to roi / return on investment which many accountants hate and which misses a massive trick on creativity and constantly changing media and consumption dynamics); ‘return on ideas’ is a robust operational platform for any marketing-finance combo in any size company, in any country in any market.  Basically it’s a wake-up call on how marketing and financial management people can work together, as a creative business development team, jointly recommending initiatives and proposing a strategic marketing plan (http://www.tbda.co.uk/) to the Board for the good of the organisation that employs them.  

The initiative was started with our work on the DMA Agencies Council where the lamentable absence of marketers on corporate board tables is anathema.  The result is a stunning piece of thought leadership and common sense implementation agenda.  

If you really care and really want to solve this marketing credibility dilemma, you definitely don’t need an expensive management consultancy resource.  You could consider using this ‘return on ideas’ formula and harness the mentoring opportunity.