Can marketers really become an accountable, fiscally literate function if they’re not even talking to their finance teams? No right minded line manager would hire or fire without taking advice from the experts in HR, so why is there still such a stigma around marketing and finance?

I’ve come to the conclusion that, despite our poll stats (in our paper and above), the stigma is finally waning. I actually think, particularly in this post-recession world, that marketing and finance teams are more of a match made in heaven than reluctant bed-fellows.

Take the basics: marketers invest a firm’s capital and have the most control over demand. There’s the first great reason to start talking: capital is scarcer, more expensive and most businesses are more cautious than they used to be when it comes to spending it. If marketers require investment to stimulate demand (pretty much a given), then they need clarity on where to invest, how to monitor and evaluate returns and how best to articulate this to secure the required budget.

I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather engage to help me with this, than a finance team. It’s a win-win:

For marketers: if they can help us to direct investment at the segments and programmes which will give the best ROI… make sure the numbers are on track and show the results… and frame this in such a way that makes sign-off a painless process - we’re left in a good place

For finance colleagues: they’re building the financial discpline of the business, improving cash flow generation and return on investment and helping the business make good commercial choices - all positives again

Hence my current view - marketers don’t need to retrain as accountants, we’ve all got teams of experts already… we just need to work with them. It’s a match made in heaven in my books and in our current economic context - not an optional one.

Thomas Brown is Head of Insights at The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM)

Fast forward to 2010 and the term is prevalent once again but, in my view, something is different.  Today, CEO’s are placing demands on their executives for a level of organisational change far deeper than observed in the past.

And, more often than not, they’re looking to marketing leaders to champion this customer agenda and provide a blueprint for the organisational change needed to bring their demands to life.

So how do we, as marketers, respond? I’ve seen too many businesses respond in a manner more befitting the past - investing in customer forums, executive networking, internal communications and similar. In short, efforts seem to start - and end - with the tangible (or tactical) actions which demonstrate something is happening. Not to challenge the validity of such activities… I would simply suggest this barely scratches the surface.

In our think tank discussions around ‘building customer centric businesses’, much of our time was dedicated to exploring how marketing can facilitate change in the modus operandi of their organisations. It became clear, at least to me, that becoming customer centric isn’t proven with ‘an initiative’, but by truly re-engineering what the business does, how it does it and why… with a focus on putting the customer at the heart of planning and management decisions. In short, it’s the power of ‘everything else’ that has the potential to turn customer centricity from a management mantra to a strategic priority.

Thomas Brown is Head of Insights at The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

During the day we’d been exploring ways of ensuring that all touchpoints reinforce the brand. It’s a big ask - it means aligning marketing, communications, sales, customer services, HR, finance, etc in a unified approach.

There were half a dozen of us in the room discussing how to partner with other departments. We debated piggybacking on other projects, roping in customer services or HR, or other collaborative approaches. Finally John spoke: “We’ve tried all this over many years. The only thing that worked is when we handed over ownership to sales and operations”.

Stunned silence. Give up the customer experience? And to sales and operations, of all people?! Cue epiphany: John’s right. I’m not saying that all such initiatives should be led by sales departments… but surely customer experience has to be owned and driven by the part of the business closest to the customer?

If marketers spend less than 50% of their time with customers, how can we possibly have the same insight or impact? The question is - are we prepared to let go? Or is control more important than the end result? 

Thomas Brown is Head of Insights at The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

At CIM, we ran a global benchmarking study into structure and leadership in 2009. Guess what? 87% of marketing leaders felt dissatisfied with the role, position and understanding of marketing in their organisations.

The complaint is heartfelt - but what are we doing about it? A colleague at Accenture, with whom we conducted this study, remarked that marketers claim the ‘dog ate my homework’ excuse a little too often.

This same study also found that - in the eyes of marketing leaders themselves - 75% of marketing functions lacked skills of a strategic or cross-functional nature.

So what if a new generation of enlightened CEOs gave marketing a top table role? Would marketers be ready? When I ask CMOs what they have done to improve the skills and capability of their functions, many are forced to admit ‘very little’.

To play the sort of role we crave, we need to stop lobbying for influence and start building the capabilities and delivering the performance which will, I believe, lead to a re-rating of marketing as a discipline. For ‘the dog ate my homework’, let’s try earning our stripes instead.

Thomas Brown is Head of Insights at The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

Measurement is usually understood as a business imperative, demanded by the business of marketing departments that struggle to articulate their impact.

Increasingly though, I believe we will see marketers ASKING for their efforts to be measured - so that the value they create can be recognised and, yes, rewarded.

It’s all part of a change in how marketing careers develop. Average length of service at 3M is seventeen years - a huge plus in terms of customer knowledge, proximity and experience (see ‘The future’s not what it used to be‘) - but that number is coming down, as the shape and arc of a career in marketing changes.

As expectations change so does motivation. Generation Y marketers want challenges, they want the opportunity to make an impact and build a network but let’s be realistic - they may not be looking for the long-service award.

Which brings us back to measurement. Salespeople are used to being paid for performance - good ones wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s not so clear cut in marketing: could we really put in place the framework to measure and reward the impact of our best marketers fairly across the board?  If marketing functions are able to reach their goal of demonstrating ROI we may have to get used to a new corollary - hard cash for great performance.

David Cook is General Manager, Corporate Marketing, Public Affairs and Strategy Development, UK/Ireland Region, 3M UK PLC

Unstable market conditions make it harder to use the past to predict the future. Instead, marketers and business leaders need to be scanning the horizon for the next disruptive force - be it economic, technological or social.

Yes you need data but you also need something deeper. A great businessperson can pick out, from a fat report or a quarter’s sales figures, the killer stat that reveals an emerging trend that is changing the game. At 3M we call it ‘environmental scanning’ but an old-fashioned word works just as well: intuition.

You can’t teach intuition but you can set up networks and work paths, so experience is shared across the company. A culture of openness accelerates learning.

Happily, at 3M people are amazingly generous with their time and experience. We are now using Yammer (a kind of corporate Twitter) to encourage this.

There’s another thing you can do to sharpen your commercial instincts: get out there. When people refer to marketing as a desk job, I think of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton who reckoned he had been in more stores than anyone else in America.

Get out there, meet your customers, understand how they behave. It’s the surest way to develop the intuition that can take you beyond crude data analysis.

David Cook is General Manager, Corporate Marketing, Public Affairs and Strategy Development, UK/Ireland Region, 3M UK PLC