The Hindu Business Line : Calling corporate leaders

For practitioners of marketing there couldn't be a more exciting time to live in. The population is growing younger, the economy is on a great growth trajectory, most sectors are performing well, consumption is a good word, more people have an allocable surplus, and they want to spend it.

This is indeed a far cry from the Sixties, Seventies and the Eighties. India was in what I call a rationing mode. Choices were severely limited. Manufacturers had grown used to the licence-permit-quota-Raj and the consumer was a damned soul, paying for poor-quality goods and slip-shod service. This era of socialist economics and monopolist tendencies actually gave marketing a bad name.

It was logical to see marketing people as unnecessary baggage. Many companies did not have specialist marketing staff at all. I have closely interacted with government-owned telecom and banking companies where engineers and finance people routinely underwent the forced drudgery of a three-year posting in the `planning and development' department that took care of `marketing'.

I use this example only because telecom and banking are action-packed, marketing-driven sectors today. Marketing actually meant sales and distribution. Advertising meant expenditure. This era obviously gave rise to the mindset that marketing was something that could be switched on and off at will, and was definitely not an imperative function. Many companies did not even have a designation with marketing as a suffix.

Fast forward to today

Near-perfect competition has raised the profile of marketing to a function of great importance. Yet, I believe, the mindset I spoke about earlier is unfortunately alive and well. Marketing, in its classic sense, is really not getting the importance it deserves.

THE IMPORTANCE IT DESERVES

In an atmosphere like the one we have today, this is intolerable. Marketing needs to be suffused with all the ingredients necessary for it to play the critical role it has to play in the destiny of corporate India.

Let's start at the education level. Even if one should stick to the top educational institutions, I believe that it is only recently that entrepreneurship has been getting a little importance. It needs more emphasis. I say this not because I want every IIM graduate to run out and start their own enterprise, but because I want them to assume ownership of the brands they work with. Too long have we had brilliant young minds from middle-class families topping the IIMs, joining top companies at fancy pay scales, and being filled with insecurities, proceeding to play it safe like government bureaucrats.

This is an appeal to corporate leaders to empower their marketing people and urge them to take on ownership of the activities, products and brands they manage. Only then can they stop micro-managing and begin envisioning. And this can happen only if top management encourages an environment that fosters this.

I would like to see a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) in every company standing shoulder to shoulder with the CFO and the CEO and building institutions that will last.

I would urge these top marketing people to use market research as a tool to gather insights, not as a blanket to validate their decisions.

I long for the day when advertising spends are not cut abruptly to shore up the next quarters' results. This needs a strong CMO backed by a strong corporate leader. Someone who can put into practice all the preaching that cries out for sustained investment in brand-building.

PITCH ME NOT

Why should a CMO call for an agency pitch at all? I am confident that a good CMO knows which agency can deliver the goods. Forget about that committee and the good-looking report. This is where the corporate leader needs to have belief and faith in his CMO and let him feel comfortable enough to make an independent choice.

Why do top marketing people ask agencies for speculative campaigns?

They are painfully aware that no consumer insights can spring forth from the `dipstick' surveys that agencies conduct as a formality before any speculative campaign. How many advertisers do we know who complain that agencies do not know enough of their business to really be partners? Yet they are constrained to call a dozen agencies and spend hours being told superficial things about their business. As someone said, strategy without the marketer's input is like a dish devoid of salt. Looks great. Tastes awful.

Marketers must realise just how important they are in any communications campaign. Any effort to call for speculative campaigns really undermines the importance of the marketer.

Any corporate leader knows that when he interviews a candidate for the post of a CMO he would not ask him to present a marketing strategy. Why then do they ask their prospective agencies to do so? It really is a waste of time that stems from the lack of leadership that can encourage people to make an informed choice and stick by it. And corporate leaders must believe in their marketing people and have faith in them if they are to act as owners of the brands and not part-time absentee landlords.

And why do we have marketers wasting their time discussing which part of the agencies' remuneration should be given back to the company? Would an advertiser agree to part with a fraction of his profits if the advertising resulted in a sharp increase in sales? They would be quick to point out, rightfully, that the advertising was just one part of many aspects which contributed to the spike in sales and profits. Yet, if the sales dipped, they would be equally quick to dump the results on the doorstep of poor advertising, and invite some more speculative campaigns to appoint another advertising agency.

Empower, enlighten

An empowered and enlightened CMO would not even have to explain such things to anyone. He would have the option to stick with what he feels is right for a reasonable period of time, instead of having to make a show of tinkering with things that may not be wrong at all. We must remember that people who are considered among the best in the field internationally head our agencies. They cannot function with a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

The recent statements by advertisers that they would re-negotiate rates with the channel with whom they had legally binding rate-contracts for the period of the World Cup cricket is one example I would like to highlight.

No one can deny that India was just one of the many teams to participate in the World Cup. Obviously, the top marketers of the country took a risk (reasonable at the time) that India would not be defeated in the early stages of the tournament. The channel could not have guaranteed India making the semi-finals or the finals, or even the super-eight.

So the marketers and their agencies studied all possibilities and crunched the appropriate numbers and then agreed on rates and signed rate contracts with the channel. Suddenly they want to re-negotiate the rates. Is this what corporate governance is all about? Is integrity and fair play and best practices and all the other sanctimonious balderdash we churn out just something that holds good when things are going well? What happens if you make an honest mistake?

Shouldn't corporate leaders be making a case study of this and inspiring a generation of young marketers by adhering to their legally signed contracts and biting the bullet? What example are we setting? What role models are we acting like? Sure, size does matter and it can be used to squeeze one TV channel. But what about principles and ethics that help build character?

This is time that corporate leaders should stand up and be counted. Their marketing heads would only follow the example they set.

(Ramesh Narayan is a communications consultant. Feedback can be sent to brandline@thehindu.co.in )

More Stories on : Brands | Management | Scene & Unseen

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Welcome to the ignorance economy!

Cricketing woes

De-risking the name of the game

Tales of a traveller

The cold war

The Esprit behind the brand

Calling corporate leaders

Micro-actions can cause mega results