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Offsetting Marketing Budget Reductions

30 Dec

budget cut“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” ~  Warren Buffett

If you’re like many marketers, 2023 budgets have either been frozen at last year’s level or reduced in light of what many organizations believe will be a soft economy in the coming year. That said, company expectations relating to brand development, customer acquisition and revenue generation goals can seem daunting.

The good news is that there are five key steps that can be taken to offset budget reductions and refuel marketing budgets:

  1. Review and revise annual Scopes of Work – Working in conjunction with your agency partners, representatives from the marketing and procurement teams should reassess project deliverables relative to approved spend levels and make the requisite adjustments. Focusing the extended team’s efforts on strategies and tactics that are critical to the attainment of the organization’s core business goals are the top priority. Out-of-scope work should be prohibited and or at a minimum, tightly controlled and non-essential programs shelved until business conditions improve and or additional marketing funds are allocated.
  2. Evaluate and improve Client/ Agency work processes – The opportunity for efficiency gains in this area are numerous, particularly in longer term relationships where too often bad habits, that drive costs up or limit market timing opportunities have become status quo. Key areas to review include the creative and media briefing and client-side approval processes. Ineffective and or inefficient approaches to these basic tasks waste time and increase project costs. Conversely, tightening brief development and streamlining the approval process can reduce fees associated with agency rework costs and decrease the time required to execute certain tasks.
  3. Right size your agency network – Over time, an organization’s roster of agency partners can swell to unwieldly levels, leading to management challenges, overlapping resources and duplicative costs. Internally reviewing each agencies roles and responsibilities to identify opportunities for focusing each agencies resource offering and reducing overlap. Longer term, consider the creation of broadcast and digital production and content curation and production centers of excellence, consolidating activities in this area to generate scale economies and reduce agency fee outlays. Additionally, work with your agency partners to identify opportunities to remove links from the marketing/ advertising supply chain. In short, reduce the number of intermediaries involved in the production, placement, and trafficking of your advertising to reduce unnecessary fees and costs.
  4. Review agency financial management practices and contract compliance – Auditing agency compliance and financial stewardship can lead to the identification of billing errors, earned but unprocessed credits, unbilled media balances that should be returned, the application of unauthorized mark-ups and agency time-of-staff under deliveries that could result in financial recoveries. Additionally, the independent review of project management, job initiation and reconciliation processes can lead to cost avoidance strategies that result in meaningful savings.
  5. Reconsider the “Estimated Billing” process – As interest rates have increased, so too has a company’s cost-of-capital. One key tenet of any organization’s treasury management practice is to retain control of its money for as long as possible. However, when it comes to advertising outlays, the industry tends to work on an “estimated billing” process where each agency bills for work to be done, services to be procured or media to be purchased upon approval, with the pledge to reconcile estimated costs to actual once a job has closed or a campaign completed. Unfortunately, this results in an advertiser’s funds being held and managed by others, with no economic benefit (e.g., interest income) and some level of financial risk. Consider moving to a “final billing” process whereby invoices are submitted by the agency for payment once services have been rendered and third-party costs validated. In turn, advertisers should be prepared to tender payment upon receipt of these invoices, so that none of its agency partners is required to go out-of-pocket to compensate third-party vendors.

Taking some or all of these actions can offset the impact of budget reductions or freezes. As importantly, an open-minded review of a marketer’s partners and processes will generate financial recoveries and future savings that will help refuel and improve their marketing investment.

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The Cost of Feedback is Nominal, the Value Significant.

30 Jun

do advertisers get what they pay for“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.” ~ Elon Musk

Chances are, most will agree with Mr. Musk’s sentiments regarding feedback and its link to driving improvements.

What organization wouldn’t aspire to successes achieved by one of the 21st century’s most prolific thinkers? Consider the fact that Tesla, with a market cap of $160 billion, is larger than GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler combined. Or that his fledgling SpaceX organization has been valued at $36 billion after its first successful manned space flight.

As such, it was somewhat of a surprise to read the results of a recent World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) study. Conducted by Decideware, the study surveyed 60 global agency leaders on client-agency performance evaluation practices. Below are some key findings:

  • 7 out of 10 advertisers provide their agencies with feedback on at least an annual basis
  • Only 4 out of 10 advertisers allow for agency feedback as part of the evaluation process
  • 3 out of 10 clients conduct face-to-face meetings to discuss evaluation results
  • Agencies aren’t comfortable providing “honest feedback”
  • 43% cited the lack of honest feedback as the “biggest barrier” to effective evaluations

That so few marketers would invite their ad agencies to provide formal feedback on topics dealing with team performance, workflow, process and the overall relationship is a bit of a mystery; particularly given that anecdotally it has long been believed that strong client-agency relationships yield superior performance.

In our experience, we have found numerous examples of successful marketers that believe in and are utilizing a 360-degree evaluation process with their agency partners. Importantly, that process  incorporates candid, two-way dialog, which serves as a fundamental building block for their agency relationship management efforts.

It would be helpful to understand “why” some marketers have chosen not to invite agency feedback or to review performance evaluation results in face-to-face meetings. Are they simply not interested in what their agencies have to say? Are they too understaffed and time strapped to invest in a robust evaluation process? Are they of the belief that if their agency partners had a point-of-view that they would share their insights, without prompting?

Regardless of the reasons for eschewing this fundamental practice, there are compelling benefits to be gained for marketers by course correcting in this area by implementing two-way evaluation frameworks. At a minimum, eliciting agency feedback on day-to-day workflows, briefings and approval processes, in market results and client-agency relationship management can yield efficiencies that are beneficial to stakeholders on both sides.

Beyond near-term improvements in operations and performance, established communications programs, that encourage ongoing candid feedback, help to build trust and strengthen relationships. It is incumbent upon CMOs and agency CEOs to collaborate on putting the appropriate protocols in place to encourage, understand and act upon the perspective each party generates throughout the year.

 

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4 Quick Steps to Boost Marketing Efficiency… Now

21 May

EfficiencyDriving performance, improving efficiency and boosting working dollars are three primary focus areas of marketers the world over. COVID-19 and the related budgetary pressures aside, this has been a focus of marketers and will continue to be, well into the future.

The quickest and often simplest path to attaining these objectives relates directly to process improvements that are well within a Chief Marketing Officer’s sphere of influence.

Below is an overview of the four key process steps that marketers can and should consider evaluating for potential improvement opportunities:

  1. Review the creative development and media planning briefing process with the goal of enhancing the efficacy of this essential practice and applying it appropriately to the ongoing client-agency workflow. A poorly conceived or ambiguous brief drives project costs, causes delays and can result in lackluster outputs.
  2. Streamline the review and approval process to cut down on delays and agency re-work. Minimize unnecessary rounds of review at the ideation and planning stages to mitigate the risk of excess agency staff time or excess costs creeping into the project.
  3. Extend current campaigns and or repurpose proven work rather than undertake the risk and expense of creating new content for select brands and or promotions. For many marketers, brand support and promotional events are often repeated annually / seasonally, allowing them the opportunity to modify and reapply existing plans, approaches and content rather than investing in the development of new approaches.
  4. Encourage the agencies to close and reconcile jobs and campaigns in a concise and timely manner to account for and return unspent funds. Nothing good happens when approved, often pre-paid dollars are left unreconciled for extended periods of time. Marketers should require their agency partners to close jobs quickly, once completed, and true-up actual costs immediately following job closure.

The above areas, if not applied and managed properly, are the source of significant inefficiency which limits a marketers return on investment. As American businessman and author, John Rampton once said:

“Make no mistake about it. Bad habits are called ‘bad’ for a reason. They kill productivity and creativity. They slow us down. They hold us back from achieving our goals. And they’re detrimental to our health.”

 

 

 

 

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Pandemic Impact on Marketing: Prudent Action Required by Advertisers

17 Mar

Action

Ad revenues are projected to contract by $20 billion this year alone, with no clear insight into the lasting impact of COVID-19 on the $690 billion global ad industry (source: eMarketer).

Setting aside the human costs of the pandemic, businesses in general and, advertisers in particular, face some startling decisions as the world implements various forms of social distancing in an effort to stem the spread of the virus.

In the U.S. alone, the NBA and NHL have suspended their seasons, the NCAA Basketball Tournament has been cancelled, Major League Baseball has delayed the start of its regular season and The Master’s Golf Tournament has been postponed. We reference sports for one simple reason, the level of 2020 marketing sponsorships. Advertising and promotional dollars invested by advertisers in these properties alone was estimated by Kantar Media to be $2 billion.

In the U.S. alone, the NBA and NHL have suspended their seasons, the NCAA Basketball Tournament has been cancelled, Major League Baseball has delayed the start of its regular season and The Master’s Golf Tournament and Kentucky Derby have been postponed. Sports is but one example and we reference it for one simple reason, 2020 marketing spend levels. Advertising and promotional dollars invested by advertisers in these properties alone was estimated by Kantar Media to be $2 billion.

Undoubtedly, advertisers will be seeking answers to the following questions as they begin their contingency planning efforts this week:

  1. Of the marketing and advertising commitments we’ve made, what can be cancelled outright?
  2. For those commitments that we’ve made in events, sponsorships or programs that have been suspended or postponed, can we recoup the impacted pro-rated investment amounts?
  3. How will media owners/sellers address upfront or volume-based commitments when it comes to media valuations in the context of advertiser rebates and or cancellations?
  4. If we pull-back on our marketing and advertising activities, what will the impact be on our annual statement of work, agency deliverables and associated fees?

Complicating this assessment for advertisers is the fact that so much of the industry operates on an estimated billing basis. Unfortunately, the advertiser’s line of sight is limited as to what percentage of estimated and pre-paid costs have been spent versus that which remains in the hands of their agents and intermediaries.

It would clearly be ideal to make go-forward decisions with a solid financial understanding when it comes to exactly how much budget can be pulled back and or quickly re-allocated. The risk of a bad decision in this area can often outweigh the costs of a delayed response. To assist in this area, marketers may want to consider conducting billing and agency fee reconciliations to help clarify where on the annual spending continuum they’re at when determining how best to approach potential budgetary reallocation decisions.

The time and cost required to conduct mid-year status checks and financial reconciliation work is nominal versus the inherent risk of making decisions without a complete picture. Importantly, engaging an independent firm to undertake these endeavors allows the marketing team members and their agency partners to focus their collective efforts on reviewing plan commitments, escape clauses and assessing resource re-allocation decisions.

Prudent, measured action in this scenario is a win-win for all parties.

“Prudence is foresight and far-sightedness. It’s the ability to make immediate decisions on the basis of their longer-range effects.” ~ John Ortberg

 

 

 

 

 

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Time for Action, Not Apathy

31 Jan

ActionFraud continues to run rampant as digital media and programmatic buying continue to surge in popularity, garnering ever larger shares of global advertising spend. Regulatory actions around consumer privacy and data protection are presenting a plethora of challenges for the industry and its ability to use data to customize advertising messaging and delivery.

These are seminal issues that the advertising industry has been talking about for years. The risks and costs to advertisers and other industry players are significant. So how effectively has the industry dealt with these critical issues? If one were to generate an opinion based upon results, it would be easy to adopt the perspective that the ad industry has not dealt with these issues well at all.

Let’s start with the topic of ad fraud. While we all read the headlines, the question is; “Have we become numb to the impact of ad fraud on working dollars?” Consider that according to Juniper Research, advertisers lost $51 million per day to ad fraud in 2018. AFFISE estimates that 35.3% of all processed traffic in the first two quarters of 2019 was fraudulent. The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) has stated that ad fraud will hit $50 billion per year by 2025.

One short year ago Facebook, in a highly publicized move eliminated 2.2 billion fake accounts, this following the elimination of 1 billion fake accounts during the 4th quarter of 2018. Interestingly, Facebook, one-half of the vaunted “duopoly” which captured over 65% of U.S. digital ad spend in 2019, itself accounts for 1 out of every 5 dollars spent on digital media in the U.S. (source: eMarketer) before and after this move.

While surely an astute media planner could readily make the case for Facebook’s appeal to advertisers, the justification for its share of the digital ad market is mystifying to the layman. According to the United Nations Population Division, there are 7.7 billion people in the world. Nielsen Online has identified 4.5 billion internet users globally. So, if Facebook eliminated more than 3.2 billion accounts, albeit fake over the course of four months, how many accounts could it possibly have had? What level of due diligence were agencies and advertisers undertaking to verify the base? Or, could it be that the industry simply has no valid means of verifying or measuring key digital audience factors?

The term “Big Data” was coined in the early part of the 1990s, referring to the vast amounts of data being gathered as the internet expanded. The data allowed marketers to conduct computational analysis that could reveal patterns, trends and associations related to human behavior. As the use of algorithms, artificial intelligence and marketing automation technology has come into vogue, the ability to more finitely target an advertiser’s message to specific niches, based upon this data, held great promise. This led to the meteoric growth of AdTech and MarTech solution providers vying for a share of advertiser dollars.

Then, in 2016, the European Union introduced the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ushering in laws designed to protect consumer data and privacy. GDPR has since served as a model for regulatory action in countries around the world and within the United States, with the introduction of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The impact on the ad industry has been significant as marketers, technology providers and publishers have struggled to comply with these varying laws. In turn, this led one important player, Google to announce the elimination of third-party cookies from its Chrome browser to avoid some of the risks associated with privacy regulation. The impact on marketers’ audience targeting and attribution modeling efforts will be swift and significant. Some have suggested that this could even signal the end of personalized marketing.

From this author’s perspective, the industry has not effectively dealt with these challenges. There are simply too many disparate interests at stake, which have served as very real impediments to progress in tackling these issues.

Let’s face it, in spite of the impact of fraud, fake devices, fake locations, fake impressions, fake consent strings, ineffectual brand safety and fraud detection services and a lack of uniform industry measurement and verification standards, advertisers continue to spend on media types, intermediaries and technologies that are simply not generating a return worthy of their investment. So where is the impetus for change?

Rather than working on real solutions to address real problems, the industry adopts labels or coins phrases that cover its retreat. Examples such as “Human Marketing” and the need to treat our target audiences as “people” as a solution to the inability to deal with the challenges presented by big data, technology and regulation to customize and personalize at scale. Or the use of the term “Contextual Marketing” in which ad delivery is based upon scanning texts of web pages and serving up a marketer’s ads based upon relevant keywords, rather than behavioral data. Or the nuanced notion of “Brand Suitability” versus “Brand Safety” to mask the inability to adhere to advertiser blacklists and or to ensure proper editorial adjacencies. Really? How is this all of a sudden more appealing than the noble quest, funded by advertisers, that gave birth to the “MarTech 5000” list.

From the outside looking in, it appears as though the industry is content with taking the path of least resistance, opting for a safer, more self-centered approach to issue resolution, rather than focus on doing what is best for the entire industry and ignoring advertisers’ desires to increase the effectiveness of their marketing spend.

To paraphrase American author, Richard Yates from his novel about 1950’s suburban life entitled Revolutionary Road; “It’s a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little mediocrity.”

 

 

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Supply Chain Optimization: A Concept Whose Time Has Come for Marketers

28 Jan

Supply Chain Management word cloud, made with text only.Much has changed since the diminished role of the full-service agency in the 1980’s. Decoupling and specialization initially swelled the size of marketers’ agency networks, then the meteoric rise of digital and social media further expanded the ranks of specialist agencies and gave birth to the adtech and martech industries. In the end, all served to significantly expand the advertising supply chain, adding complexity and cost.

A biproduct of these events is downward pressure on marketers’ working dollars, as an increasing portion of the budget is funneled to agency fees and underwriting the growing costs of advertising related technology. Thus, a key challenge faced by marketers today is evaluating how to reduce supply chain related fees as part of their efforts to improve efficiencies, drive revenues and build strong brands.

Strategies for addressing this challenge include; consolidating supply chain partners, reducing the number of agencies and intermediaries in the roster, and establishing distinct roles and responsibilities among agency and intermediary partners to eliminate redundancy and clarify deliverable and KPI ownership. Along the way it’s important to seek better alignment between agency remuneration programs, resource allocation needs and business outcomes.

Scrutinizing and monitoring supply chain partner performance, in the context of the client/ agency agreements that govern the relationships, is a necessary ingredient for successful implementation for each of these strategies. Establishing a formal marketing supplier accountability program also mitigates supply chain related risk while providing a foundation for improving supply chain efficiency.

Unfortunately, too often there is no clear organizational “ownership” around marketing supply chain accountability. While marketing clearly serves as the relationship management lead with suppliers, their principal focus is and should be on brand building, customer acquisition and demand generation.  Therefore, it may be unrealistic to expect marketing executives to serve as the “principal in charge” for supplier accountability. This is particularly so considering the number and nature of obligations that comprise an accountability program, including but not limited to the following:

  • Agency contract compliance reviews
  • Agency remuneration reviews
  • Annual agency fee reconciliations
  • Annual marketing supplier billing reconciliations
  • Annual 360-degree supplier performance evaluations
  • Supplier performance reviews
  • Supplier pricing reviews and competitive bidding
  • Supplier contract and SOW reviews

Based on experience, we firmly believe that involvement and support from corporate groups such as; Procurement, Finance and Internal Audit are critical to marketing supply chain optimization. Involving individuals and leadership from these groups to shoulder responsibility for the accountability program is important to drive supply chain efficiency – or at the very least these individuals can support Marketing’s efforts, ease Marketing’s burden, and bring cross-functional perspectives to bear.

At the end of the day, there are two overriding goals for any marketing supply chain optimization program:

  1. Strong supplier relationships
  2. Optimized use of corporate marketing budgets

In a growing, complex, rapidly changing market sector which represents over $1.3 trillion in global marketing and advertising spend (source: PQ Media) the need to embrace supply chain optimization has never more clear, nor the associated benefits more meaningful.

 

 

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Navigating Marketing’s Turbulent Waters

26 Oct

waypointHaving choices can certainly be a good thing. But an overabundance of options carries its own set of challenges. Thom Browne, the American designer once said that: “When people have too many choices, they make bad choices.” 

While an apt description of the $560 billion global advertising industry or not, the expansion and fragmentation of the advertising sector, fueled by rapid advances in technology has complicated things for many of the industry’s stakeholders. Consider the following:

  • In addition to traditional TV, there are over 100 streaming services available in the U.S.
  • According to Internet Live Stats, there are 1.7 billion websites on the worldwide web
  • Fast Company estimates that there are over 525,000 active podcast shows
  • Author Scott Brinker identified 7,040 MarTech solutions in his 2019 Marketing Tech Landscape
  • Agency Spotter indicates that there are 120,000 ad agencies in the U.S., 500,000+ worldwide
  • Inc. Magazine has identified 700,000 consulting firms across business functions globally

As the plethora of options have grown, so has the level of angst and uncertainty among marketing practitioners and suppliers alike. For an industry that has always prided itself on its ability to adapt to change, the current environment is somewhat unsettling.

Complicating things is the consumers growing disdain for advertising, which the New York Times profiled in a recent article entitled: “The Advertising Industry Has a Problem. People Hate Ads” in which it chronicles some of the attitudes and behaviors being exhibited by consumers that could have a profound impact on the industry. In the article, the Times referenced a recent report from Group M, which put forth the proposition that these are “dangerous days for advertisers.”

Let’s face it, there are few “tried and true” approaches that marketers can fall back on to guide their strategic and resource allocation decisions in this environment. Further, given the rate and rapidity of change from a legislative and technology perspective there are simply not that many industry guideposts to assist marketers in effectively charting a course forward or in evaluating progress.

While we believe that there will be a contraction in the supply chain, marked by a consolidation of agency brands, consulting firms, martech solutions providers and media outlets, we don’t believe that this suggests a return to simpler times.

To reduce the level of dissonance, marketers will likely seek to streamline their “world” by rightsizing their agency networks, clarifying roles and responsibilities among their suppliers, transitioning certain work in-house and taking a more considered and cautious approach to the adoption of “shiny new objects” whether related to technology or messaging options.

Given the continued focus by their C-Suite peers on marketing performance, CMOs will maintain a dual focus on driving revenues, while achieving efficiencies across their supply chain to boost working dollars as a percentage of total marketing spend. This is not an either/ or option. Recognizing this “reality” an advertiser’s agency and consulting partners can provide critical support by focusing on the identification of waypoints on the path to performance, rather than pursuing a grandiose focus on future-think outcomes. In the words of 17thcentury Japanese shogun leyasu Tokugawa:

“Let thy step be slow and steady, that thou stumble not.”

 

 

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Work from Home or Not at All. The Evolving Role of Perks in Attracting Talent.

12 Oct

Ping pong table, rackets and balls in a sport hallThe ping-pong table sat idle, covered with stacks of paper, the modern day version of an in-home treadmill as hanging plant holder. Once considered an important perk and a reflection of a firm’s employee-centric culture, ping-pong tables in the workplace may have seen their halcyon days.

The marketing industry as a whole is wrestling with the issue of attracting and retaining talent. So much so in fact that the Association of National Advertisers’ CMO Growth Council made “talent and capabilities” one of its five core pillars for “driving business growth and societal good.” Globally, business leaders are working with their counterparts in academia to help attract young people to the marketing profession, while aligning curriculums with the emerging needs of a fast evolving industry to better prepare students for a marketing career. Additionally, consumer marketing companies, advertising agencies, media firms and others within the marketing sector have stepped up their on-campus recruiting efforts in an effort to identify and secure the next generation of marketing practitioners.

Thus it was with great interest that I read a recent article in [email protected] entitled; “Wither the Ping-Pong Table? Which Perks Matter Most to Employees.” The article focused on the role that perks play in attracting and retaining employees.

One of the principal benefits of perks is their appeal to “top performers,” that small percentage of a firm’s employees that drive disproportionate value. Modern day perks range from paternity leave to flex time, unlimited vacation, on-site gyms and dry-cleaning service. Equally as important as their appeal to top talent: “Perks are symbolic of valuing employees, and people will give more when they are in a culture which is supportive and caring.” This according to Nancy Rothbard, Professor of Management at Wharton,

For the marketing and advertising industry, which has increased its efforts to replenish its ranks of energetic, knowledgeable professionals across a range of functions, perks play an important role in their talent sourcing efforts. Aside from helping to attract newcomers, perks also play a vital role in helping to energize a work place, build comradery among co-workers and reinforcing a firm’s cultural identity.

According to the Wharton article, perks that emanate from an organization’s culture tend to resonate with its employee base in a way that yields significant symbolic value. One example cited by Sigal Barsade, Professor of Management at Wharton was the offering of pet bereavement days, which can reinforce the notion that a company’s culture traits include “affection, caring and compassion.”

So what perks will provide the greatest value for your firm? Unlimited vacation, while appealing, is also quite costly. Perhaps goat yoga will yield the same results, with lower costs to the organization. Either way, the role of perks, rather than a reliance on the escalation of salary dollars, cannot be underestimated in winning the talent game.

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Clean Up in Aisle 12. Sponsored by…

28 May

Asian grocery noodle aisleSome of the world’s largest retailers have their sights set on garnering a larger share of the ad market. And why not. Amazon is expected to generate $11 billion in advertising revenue this year, growing to $15 billion in 2020 (source: eMarketer).

So it comes as no surprise to learn that other retailers have taken steps to shore up their ad platforms. In April, Walmart acquired Silicon Valley-based Polymorph Labs and their content sensitive digital ad serving and analytical capabilities to help strengthen its Walmart Media Group and Target is rumored to be interested in acquiring WPP’s Triad Retail Media unit to support its Roundel media division. All three retailers are actively courting advertisers and their agency partners to pitch the media and product sales benefits of their data driven advertising offerings.

On one hand, one might question why is this even newsworthy? Traditional retailers have long been in the ad business, selling advertising to the brands that they carry on in-store media, in weekly ad circulars, in price-item television and radio spots and in OOH. Thus the expanded focus on sophisticated, data-driven digital advertising solutions should come as no surprise.

That said, the potential to integrate target audience information with web browsing data, shopper data and location data to serve up relevant ads in an environment where consumers can immediately click-to-buy and receive their merchandise in a day or two has the potential to revolutionize the retail ad industry.

As retailers refine their offering and simplify platform use, they will quickly cannibalize traditional search and digital display advertising activity. Factor in the ability to tap retailers omnichannel databases, with the goal of refining ad targeting to drive digital media efficiency and the appeal of retailer digital ad platforms increases exponentially.

Consider Walmart Media Group’s pitch to advertisers; with “90% of Americans shopping at Walmart every year” and “160 million visitors” in-store and online every week, Walmart Media Group helps brands to “reach more customers at scale and measure advertising effectiveness across the entire shopping journey.” 

On the surface this evolution of retail advertising certainly appears to be a win-win for the industry. Retailers benefit from a new, high margin revenue stream that is largely technology driven, relying on automated platforms. For the agency community, specialist agencies are already coming to the fore that focus exclusively on assisting brands in assessing and realizing opportunities associated with these retailer digital ad platforms. And, from a brand perspective, serving up targeted ads in a brand safe, fraud free environment with the potential to immediately convert consumer interest to sales is a compelling value proposition.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for manufacturers as more retailers join the fray, will be to balance the ongoing need to strengthen their brands and for some, to build their own direct-to-consumer offerings, while funding their participation in retailer digital ad platforms. Make no mistake, while a brand may be able to build a solid business case for investing with their retail partners, retailer leverage over brands to influence whether or not they buy-in and at what level will be real as the balance of power pendulum continues to swing in favor of omnichannel retailers.

 

 

 

 

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Things Are Looking Up for Marketing

26 Apr

What do these seemingly disparate items have in common?

Building Momentum Clock Time Words Moving Forward

  • According to Gartner Research, North American and UK companies will spend 11.2% of corporate revenue on marketing in 2019.
  • Nearly two-thirds of CMOs are expecting to see marketing budgets rise this year.
  • The recent IPA Bellwether survey indicates that UK marketers saw an 8.7% increase in the size of their advertising budgets during the first-quarter of 2019.
  • Martech budgets will account for almost 30% of marketing expense budgets in 2019.
  • On the strength of its break-through brand building efforts Burger King is “cool again” proclaims INSEAD.
  • Former Anheuser-Busch InBev CMO, Miguel Patricio is promoted to CEO of Kraft Heinz.

In short, organizational confidence in both marketing and marketers appears to be on the rise and zero-based budgeting (ZBB) has helped, not hindered marketing’s resurgence.

By way of background UK marketers, including Unilever and Diageo, have been at the forefront in adopting ZBB, AB InBev is a ZBB organization, 3G Capital, which owns Burger King and Kraft Heinz has employed ZBB. And finally, martech budgets are soaring because organizations have driven out marketing budget inefficiencies, applying savings to fund productivity enhancing research and innovation initiatives.

Over the last decade or so, marketers had to renew their focus on demonstrating that the marketing function could in fact drive business, including both top line revenue and net profit. Importantly, marketers had to do this at a time when companies had shifted their focus to cost management and categorized marketing as an expense… not an investment.

The message sent to marketing was clear, budgets and the success of the CMO would be tied to achieving quantifiable results that supported the organization’s goals. For many firms, ZBB was an integral part of this process. ZBB provided a framework for eliminating unproductive costs and identifying areas, which better supported firm strategies and that were worthy of financial support.

At a time when “faster, better, cheaper” has become a guiding principle and where big data and technological advances are driving dizzying rates of marketplace change, building a successful marketing infrastructure has become increasingly difficult. Yet, there are numerous indicators that would suggest things are moving in a positive direction. The structure, processes and accountability that is part and parcel of a ZBB process appears to have aided marketing’s resurgence.

In the words of American economist, Emily Greene Balch:

“The future will be determined in part by happenings that it is impossible to foresee; it will also be influenced by trends that are now existent and observable.”

 

 

 

 

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