Marketeers are too important to leave marketing to others

“Everybody has to be cost conscious and keep their budget, that is natural, so kick out the controllers we don't need them anymore!”
“Of course we make quality products, anything else wouldn't sell, so we don't need quality control, kick them out!”
“Everybody has a PC at home and knows about installation of software and else, so we don't need IT-coordinators/support at the workplace.”

Who would come up with these ideas and would still keep his job? Nobody, of course.

Though in the case of the marketing function? In many boardrooms and generally in business an opinion has grown, that “Branding/marketing is too important to leave to marketeers” and “we all do marketing, so we don't need a marketing department”.

Marketing still is a relatively young function. In the 1960's multinational companies in Europe began to grasp the notion and importance of marketing originating in the US and set up a marketing department next to an existing sales department, sometimes advertising/PR department, next to finance and accounting, production, HR, etc. In the 1970's/1980's marketing transpired into smaller companies and to non-profit organizations. During the 1960's, 1970's most companies were silo-functional organizations.

Marketing as a philosophy and a function was instrumental in the transformation to more process-horizontal organizations. The marketing department has also been extremely successful in penetrating the marketing philosophy and knowledge into all outskirts of the organization. Literally the whole organization was drenched into the marketing juice in order to make all functions aware of the relevance of marketing, closeness to the customer and market needs.

And this success was the killer of marketing professionalism: “we know it all, we don't need those marketers anymore, we understood it all”.

The role of marketing as a function has been eroded into just some fancy promotions, some website activities and being analytical assistants to key account management (“marketers are so smart in juggling with Nielsen data, etc.”). Where once marketers gave companies, boardrooms guidance to company strategy and understanding of their market position now the marketing function has sunk into oblivion and almost irrelevance. This also causes the situation, that in many companies marketing as a function is just seen as a kind of breeding place for young inexperienced potential. “When you are not out of marketing by your mid-30's, you are dead meat”. Marketeers tend more and more to have an average experience span of 3 years, leave the company, or at least the marketing function to expand their career. Where have the experienced, mature marketers gone, who should be the guardians of brand marketing heritage, custodians of the brand values?

Marketing is so pivotal to the company's business, its existence that it must be embedded in every single employee's mind and way of thinking and doing. But that is also true for quality, for cost and budget sanity and nevertheless we appreciate the expertise of the quality control and finance & accounting people.
Marketing as a philosophy must be embedded in every corner of the company and as such be socialized. However the marketing management (strategy and actions to maximize the customer value over lifetime) has to be in the hands of marketing professionals, the marketing department. This is only possible with a mature organization with senior marketers and young upcoming radicals. Marketing is not a play-field, not a kindergarten; it has to be a highly professional, ambitious unit of expertise. Marketers are the managers of key resources and key capital, the brand value as an expression of customer value. They have to act as endowment keepers in a well-balanced act of continuity of brand heritage and adaptation to changing environments and needs. Marketeers should NOT be the number crunchers of market data for others, but have an early understanding of needs to change and how to prolong the customer value.

Therefore: “Marketing is too important to leave to others; marketers have to guard the customer value by constantly improving the marketing strategy and adapting it to change needs”.

Next to a CFO-COO-CIO and CEO there should always be a CMO.

This guest blog is written by:

Drs.Willem A.Boomsluiter, CEO of BOMANC Management Consultancy.
E: waboomsluiter@bomanc.com
T: 0475-350320

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