Once, the marketing manager role encompassed research, strategic planning and the full suite of tactics to take a product to market. Today, we are increasingly the communications department. And little more.
This is a quote from the recent article from Mark Ritson in the Marketing Week and a theme which has been touched upon by many in our field, but usually in smaller groups.
Mark makes this point against the backdrop of a survey called the Moorman CMO Survey, which is conducted annually by Prof Moorman of the Duke University. While most of the 2020 survey may not be relevant now as the in-COVID and post-COVID worlds may be vastly different, there is an interesting table in this survey (shared below).
This table shows the changes in the key responsibilities of the marketing function- green is more responsibility and red is lesser responsibility. As is evident, the role of the marketing function in highly strategic decisions such as revenue growth, market-entry, new product, innovation, and even pricing is on the decline.
To be honest, this is not a bolt out of the blue and we only have ourselves to blame for it. At around the turn of the new millennium, when the traditional creative+strategy+market research-driven marketing stack got upended by a new technology-driven marketing stack, marketers, for some strange reason, retreated to the trenches, instead of leading from the front. The trench was an area they were vastly familiar with - PR, advertising, communication, etc.
This may be because the marketing leads at that time could not understand how techniques such as A/B testing, dynamic bidding, ad-exchanges, everything-as-a-service, agile models, etc. work and this fear of being outed as people who do not know their stuff, led them to avoid the strategic areas of innovation, pricing, and new product development altogether.
This is one of the reasons why we keep hearing about companies that are abolishing the CMO role, how CDO (Chief Digital Officer) is the new CMO, or how marketing agencies are now approaching CDOs/CIOs for pitching new projects, rather than the CMOs.
This article (and other similar thought leadership pieces) should serve as a call to action for us marketers to disrupt ourselves and again stake claim to being the true champions of the front-offices in our organizations, rather than debating the size of the logo on the social media post with our creative agencies.
Article link: https://www.marketingweek.com/mark-ritson-marketers-strategic-responsibilities-eroding/
cheers,
Rohit
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