Take charge of your marketing.
No one cares about your success like you do – not an ad agency, not a marketing director. Do not leave your marketing oversight to others.
Over the last 30 years or so, there has been a subtle but crucial shift in how many companies manage their advertising, public relations and marketing.
Prior to the 1980s, marketing was usually a C-level activity. It was considered so important to the ongoing success of a business that the company CEO or at least an executive vice-president directly oversaw it.
In recent years, the CEO’s focus has shifted almost entirely to driving shareholder profit. Where once a company head had perhaps five to ten years to prove his or her worth, today CEOs are hired and fired on the results of just a few quarters’ profits.
The result is that marketing has been shunted off to lower-rank officers in the business such as a marketing director or communications officer, often a junior executive who may not have much real clout within the company.
A second factor is that – by emphasizing transient gains over long-term growth – jobs within the organization have become more short-term too, tied to quarterly earnings. Today, marketing jobs at many companies are seen as just a temporary “gig,” a stepping-stone to something better.
The result is that the marketing at quite a few businesses these days is being managed by:
• a less-experienced person;
• often young;
• with little interest in consistency or long-term results
He is often more concerned with promoting himself for his NEXT position.
The marketing director will then usually hand off the responsibility for the company’s marketing to an ad agency or PR firm. First, because the marketing director lacks the training and experience to actually do the work and, second, because the hired guns can take the blame if the company doesn’t hit its revenue targets.
Smaller businesses have even bigger problems
Smaller and medium-sized businesses aren’t as bad about this as corporations, but the weakness there is that the owner-entrepreneur is often so torn between having to manage money and people, networking for new clients and sometimes even answering the phones, that she may entrust the business’ promotion to a family member, friend or almost ANYone who can take it off her shoulders.
Put all these flaws together and you understand why a huge amount of marketing today is either bland, play-it-safe me-too-ism or else wildly inconsistent as new marketing directors and agencies come and go in one-year bursts.
Marketing must be overseen at the highest level of company authority or it will be prone to failure. No one – not a marketing director, not an ad agency – cares about the company’s success like the owner or chief officer.
Marketing directors care about looking good – or at least not looking bad. Agency people care most about boosting their companies’ revenues. Sure, they all hope they’ll build the company but if not – oh, well, on to the next business. After all, it’s not their money that is being gambled with.
If it IS your money that is going into marketing, you’re foolish to leave the oversight of that effort to anyone but yourself. That’s certainly not to say that the company CEO should be cranking out press releases or responding to every comment on the company blog, but she SHOULD be regularly checking that those things are being done in a manner that is consistent with her vision, goals and the long-term image of the enterprise.
That’s basic, that’s why it’s Law #0. If that isn’t happening, even following Laws #1-#10 may not ensure success.
That's my experience anyway; have you experienced something different? Tell us all about it!
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