CANNES \u2013 Marketing departments need to think more like business owners as opposed to captains or coaches if they want their businesses to grow. That\u2019s one of the early findings in the latest iteration of Marketing2020, which is led by Kantar Vermeer and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), among others.<\/p>\n
Kantar has been collaborating with the ANA to \u201cmake sense of all the changes that are happening at marketing organizations\u201d around the world and come up with \u201csome real levers that they can pull that we know have effect and go beyond somebody\u2019s view of what works but actually is data-backed,” says the CMO of Kantar Consulting, Marc de Swaan Arons.<\/p>\n
Marketing2020<\/a> is led by Kantar Vermeer in partnership with the ANA, Spencer Stuart, Forbes, MetrixLab and Adobe, as well as the World Federation of Advertisers and its organizations in China, Brazil, UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey, and France.<\/p>\n In this interview with Beet.TV at the\u00a0Cannes<\/a> Lions International Festival of Creativity, Arons talks about the impact of changes in consumer behavior and media fragmentation. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is that there is growth, but it\u2019s moving to very uncomfortable places for most of the established players,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Within consumer packaged-goods, known as FMCG in Europe, 90% of the growth over the last five years \u201chas actually been driven by people outside the top 25. In other words, there is growth but it\u2019s being pulled in by other players.\u201d<\/p>\n Big, established companies are finding that their traditional models for marketing and sales are much less relevant in a world where consumers are choosing very personalized solutions and media is fragmenting, according to Arons<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cOur program is a research study that aims to give marketing and business leaders real practical tools\u201d by January of 2019. The study will explain how growth over-performers differ in how they define growth \u201cbut also how they build growth strategy, organize for growth and how they build the new capabilities and combine those with the traditional capabilities of marketing and business.\u201d<\/p>\n Early insight from 50 of about 500 interviews with business executives that will be conducted worldwide shows an evolving role for marketing. In the past it was the brand captain. Over the last few years, marketing \u201cevolved into a role of almost the purpose coach, the marketing coach within the organization. Bringing alive the brand purpose, delivering solutions to consumers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe see a next step, which is really required, is for the marketers to evolve into the mindset of business owners. It\u2019s all about now what drives growth in a business sense. What drives bottom and topline growth. What drives personal growth for your staff and how do we recruit the best people. It\u2019s much more of an owner mindset.”<\/p>\n By moving from captain to coach to owner, \u201cthat\u2019s when you have the invitation in the boardroom to really be a peer. If marketers are seen to be playing with brands with different metrics rather than the hard business metrics that everybody else on the board works with, they\u2019re not part of the team and they\u2019re not part of driving real growth strategy,\u201d says Arons.<\/p>\n