Jennifer Rice brings up some stats — and their importance — in such a direct way that all I can do is quote (emphasis mine):

The Conference Board found that the top four chief executive challenges for 2004 were top-line growth (52%), corporate agility (42%), customer loyalty and retention (41%), and innovation (31%). By contrast, Booz Allen Hamilton found that marketing executives were focused on branding guidelines (83%), counseling divisions (52%), best-practice sharing (52%), and developing capabilities (47%). No wonder the ANA concluded: “Marketing is disconnected from the CEO agenda.”…

The ANA study concludes that “a surprisingly high percentage of correspondents believe [marketing’s] most important contributions lie in zones not typically associated with marketing, such as driving innovation and encouraging cross-functional collaboration.”…

If marketing wants to reverse its current dive into irrelevance, it needs to once again be seen as the “voice of the customer.” Ultimately, that will require less advertising and PR, and more customer communication and collaboration.

(A tip of the hat to Nick, on whose post Jennifer was riffing…)

Share This