- who reigns supreme in marketing?
“I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted…I just don’t know which half.”
John Wanamaker, the father of modern advertising.
The above is one of the many statements and instances which are evident when many CMOs fail to strike a balance between building their brands and using the requisite resources for commercial purposes.
It is a fact that many CMOs face challenges within the organisations and industries they own and operate in. It’s never been as challenging as current times – with ever-increasing customer expectations, shrinking budgets and economies, and economic uncertainties. Many a time we blame them for the advertising decisions they make without really taking time to understand them. No wonder many of them resign from their posts after a few years! It is extremely crucial for CEOs to employ the right candidates as CMOs for their organisation, possessing the exact marketing need or goal required for the role; be it brand, commercial or enterprise-wide.
Based on my observations as a Chief Operating Officer with more than 15 years of advertising experience with many of my peers within the C-suite, I have encountered three types of CMOs in my day-to-day dealings with all manner of clients: brand and strategy; commercial; and a combination of both, also known as enterprise-wide.
A ‘CMO’ or ‘Chief Marketing Officer’ is the individual responsible for overseeing the planning, development and execution of an organisation’s marketing and advertising initiatives. They play a strategic role in building brands, which is crucial for the organisation’s growth and key business strategies.
A brand-focused CMO focuses on strategy and is responsible for innovation, customer insight and analysis, and product design.
The commercial CMO focuses on sales mainly derived from advertising activities through media, outdoor advertising, digital content, social media, promotions, activations and events. They place emphasis on the quantitative aspects of marketing efforts, including return on investment (ROI), conversion rates and customer lifetime value. Some of these officers allocate their marketing budgets based on numerical figures from past advertising efforts yielding impact.
Brand-focused Chief Marketing Officers often prioritise brand-image over performance marketing, which can result in a lack of focus on measurable metrics and hinder short-term sales and growth; while commercial-focused Chief Marketing Officers may lack creativity in developing innovative strategies and prioritise short-term results at the expense of long-term brand- and relationship-building efforts, missing out on potential growth and sustainability.
The third type of CMO is a combination of the two usually referred to as Enterprise-wide, which focuses on profitable growth through strategy development and overseeing commercialisation. They also oversee innovation, product design, sales, distribution, pricing and marketing communications.
According to a Harvard Business review article by Kimberly Whitler and Neil Morgan (2017), the most predominant group of CMOs is the commercialised CMOs forming about 46%, brand CMOs at about 31% and enterprise-wide CMOs with about 23%.
The role of a Chief Marketing Officer has undergone evolution over time. In the past, CMOs’ primary focus was on advertising, market research and brand management. However, in recent years their role has shifted toward building enduring relationships by developing innovative products or solutions that address customer needs.
Having worked as a marketing communications professional for quite a significant number of years, I have had the opportunity to collaborate with Chief Marketing Officers who prioritise their brands backed by sufficient budgets, as well as those who adhere to conventional approaches that require minimal budget allocation for execution.
As enumerated above, these CMOs have their pros and cons; but for me, the one that stands out and stands the test of time is the enterprise-wide CMO – expertise in both branding and quantitative aspects of marketing is the way to go.
In our society today, it is very difficult to find these enterprise-wide-driven CMOs.
It is my hope that this article brings to the attention of CEOs and CMOs that it is very important to recruit the best candidate for the CMO position that suits needs of the organisation as one balancing between brand and sales (commercial).
It is crucial that as marketers we prioritise long-term goals over short-term achievements, which will help the marketing communications industry build brands with a purpose for its intended people.
Among brands I have worked on from the early 2000s whose CMOs were more enterprise-wide-driven were MTN, GB Foods and GGBL. We can clearly see that these brands have become iconic today because they had enterprise-wide CMOs who understood the essence of building brands as well as driving the commercial agenda.
At the end of the day, the brand must always form an integral part of what marketers do; and marketing communication efforts should be aimed at not just building brands but also addressing all critical business problems that the brand faces on a day to day basis – thus giving marketing communication agencies an opportunity to produce work creative enough to impact the business overall, while also playing their part in efforts to build long-lasting brands.
The author is Chief Operating Officer, Innova DDB Ghana
