According to one analyst (Gartner I believe), the F1000 spends 1 trillion on marketing annually. $1 Trillion USD. Not million. Not Billion. Trillion.
The Evangelists for Customer Evangelists once again reinforce my intuition with the note on “Marketing isn’t broke, Its Broken.” I think I’m going to need to subscribe to Forrester at some point… if Peter Kim is on the angle I think he may be. His write-up: Reinventing the marketing Organization offers the following executive summary:
Today’s marketing organizations are broken. Three out of four marketing
departments have reorganized in the past two years. Almost 80% of marketers don’t influence a critical customer interaction like customer service, and 85% don’t even own the “four Ps” of marketing anymore. To regain effectiveness, marketers must transition to a Customer-Centric Marketing Organization. Doing so requires: 1) redesigning P&Ls and metrics; 2) shifting culture away from marketing communications; 3) investing in a customer relationship infrastructure; and 4) rethinking agency relationships.
I’ve been toying with the idea of using “Fire Marketing“ as a provocative claim for the solution we’re working on building. I’ve been working around the marketing organization for most of my career so I’m well within that definition, but its clear that something needs to be done.
As I’ve continued to observe what is going on in the market, it is my assumption that marketing is largely being executed as a functional role, not a strategic mission. In its classical sense, the four Ps (Price, Place, Product, & Promotion) implies so much more than what most marketers are responsible for in today’s world. In most of the organizations I’ve worked with, Pricing is held by finance or the executives. Product is owned by engineering or product management. Place is owned by operations. Promotion is owned by marketing.
Peter Drucker once said “The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.” When the four responsibilities are separated like that, its really hard for me to call the function marketing. It seems only logical that it should be called promotion. If the only level you have to adjust is promotion, no wonder so much money is spent and spent so poorly.
This is a symptom of the organizational dysfunction that exists… and I suppose is, in part, the responsibility of marketers to educate their companies as to the right path.
July 21st, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Great post. I couldn’t agree with you more re: To regain effectiveness, marketers must transition to a Customer-Centric Marketing Organization.
Too often we see marketing departments unwilling to put customer needs at the forefront.