Business review on marketing.

What marketers do to engage customers has changed over the past decade. We can’t think of another discipline that has evolved so quickly. Tools and strategies that were cutting-edge a few years ago are no longer relevant.

The organizational structure of the marketing function has not changed since the practice of brand management emerged more than 40 years ago. Hierarchy from another era is still commonplace. Business review on marketing.

Many chief marketing officers are tearing up their org charts because they understand that their organizations need an update. In our research and work with hundreds of global marketing organizations, we found that many are struggling with how to draw the new chart. What is the ideal structure? This is the wrong question, according to our answer. A simple plan doesn’t exist.

Marketing leaders should ask, What values and goals guide our brand strategy, what capabilities drive marketing excellence, and what structures and ways of working will support them? Strategy must be followed by structure. Business review on marketing.

When he became the chief brand officer of the InterContinental Hotels Group, Larry Light understood that principle. Light focused the team on defining marketing’s purpose, its goals, and a process for achieving them. A rational reorganization could occur once those had been clarified.

In partnership with the Association of National Advertisers, the World Federation of Advertisers, Spencer Stuart, Forbes, MetrixLab, and Adobe, EffectiveBrands launched Marketing 2020 to understand what distinguishes superior marketing organizations from the rest. The chairman of the advisory board is the author of the initiative. The study has included in-depth qualitative interviews with more than 350 CEOs, CMOs, and agency heads. Thousands of marketers from 92 countries were surveyed online. More than 80 questions were asked of marketers about their data analytics capabilities, brand strategy, cross-functional and global interactions, and employee training.

The survey respondents were divided into two groups, overperformers and underperformers, based on their companies’ three-year revenue growth relative to their competitors. We looked at the strategies, structures, and capabilities of the two groups. It should come as no surprise that companies that are sophisticated in their use of data grow faster. The research sheds new light on the nature of the organizations that achieve superior marketing performance. It is clear that marketing is no longer a one-man show, but now extends throughout the firm, tapping virtually every function. The challenges that marketing leaders face, and what they must do to succeed, are very similar to those faced by companies and industries.