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At The Marketing Society, we are for Marketers Who Mean Business, and we have long been clear that marketing is the key driver of growth. Yet in conversations with our Members across the world, we hear the same frustration again and again: the discipline is too often reduced to comms and advertising, while the levers that drive growth sit elsewhere in the business.
The Line in the Sand: Provocations and practicalities for making marketing more effective, efficient and enjoyable
The Line in the Sand, developed in partnership with WhichWayUp, draws on structured interviews with 20 senior leaders from across the marketing world, checked against the latest research on the role of marketing and the CMO. With forewords from Sophie Devonshire, CEO of The Marketing Society, and Russell Parsons, Editor of Marketing Week, it explores why marketing so often falls short of its potential and what businesses can do about it.
Why this report matters
Marketing has more potential today than ever before. We know more about how it works than at any point in its history, the tools have never been more powerful and the fundamentals are no longer in dispute. Yet the gap between where marketing is and where it could be has never been wider.
Marketing did not shrink overnight, and nobody set out to shrink it. As the customer’s world grew more complex, businesses brought in specialists, the specialisms became silos, and the four Ps were handed out to finance, R&D and sales, leaving marketing with promotion. Data promised clarity but delivered a flood of metrics that rarely connect to the P&L, and short-termism has taken hold. Today only 13% of CEOs are very confident that marketing can demonstrate the incremental financial lift from their investment, and 65% of marketers say they feel overwhelmed.
When marketing underperforms "out there" with customers, the real problem may actually be hiding inside the business.
The report calls this The Streetlight Effect. This describes the common marketing behaviour, that when performance slips, businesses tend to look for answers in the most visible places; campaigns, new research, more data on a dashboard. But the more important causes often sit deeper, inside the organisation itself: in how well it understands customers, the capability of the team, and the influence marketing has over business.
The talent hasn’t gone anywhere. But too often the confidence, capability and permission to use it have. That’s where the opportunity sits, and we’ll unlock more of it together than we ever will alone.
Sophie Devonshire CEO, The Marketing Society
Introducing the Sweetspot
At the heart of the report is the WhichWayUp Sweetspot™, a framework that treats marketing as an organisation-wide discipline shaped by three interdependent forces:
- Customer: how well the business understands the people whose money drives it, and how that understanding shapes everything they experience, across all four Ps.
- Capability: the knowledge, skills, structures and systems needed to deliver effective marketing today and tomorrow, including the commercial fluency to hold the money conversation with the money people.
- Culture: the permission and authority marketing has to shape business strategy and influence the teams around it.
Strength in one force cannot make up for weakness in another, so all three have to work together.
Where to begin
The report recognises that the scale of change can feel like trying to boil the ocean, so it breaks the challenge into manageable steps: ten questions for you, your team and your peers to start the diagnosis, three foundations every business needs in place for marketing to thrive, and five commitments the industry can make together to share the load.
Perspectives from across the industry
This report brings together 20 senior leaders from brands, agencies, consultancies, finance and academia, including Members and Fellows of The Marketing Society.
Meet our contributors:
- Jo Arden, CSO, AMV BBDO and Chair of the APG
- Helen Bass, VP, Global Head of Marketing, Tate & Lyle
- Lucas Bergmans, Brand Director, NatWest
- Steve Challouma, General Manager & CMO, formerly CMO, Nomad Foods
- Gita de Beer, Director Commercial Transformation, Heineken, Chair of The Marketing Society Singapore
- Mats Georgson, PhD, Consultant, Strategist & Academic
- Mark Given, Chief Technology, Data & Marketing Officer, Sainsbury’s and President of ISBA
- Ali Hanan, Founder, Creative Equals
- Emma Harris, CEO, Glow London and Chair of The Marketing Academy Alumni
- Tom Lewis, Private Equity CFO, formerly Finance Director, IPA
- Pete Markey, CMO, University of Nottingham
- Nick Myers, CSO, OLIVER
- Brent Nelsen, Chief Strategy Advisor, Publicis Groupe Canada
- Alex O’Rourke, Co-Founder, LockSmith
- Tom Roach, VP of Brand Strategy, Jellyfish
- Zoe Scaman, Founder, Bodacious
- Andrew Tindall, Chief Growth Officer, System1
- Annabel Venner, Fractional CMO & Board Adviser
- Dan White, Author of The Smart Marketing Series
- Karen Wilkinson, Marketing Director UK&I, Evergreen Garden Care
Their perspectives point to the same conclusion. Marketing is not a department that makes adverts; as the report defines it, marketing is customer understanding used to deliver competitive advantage.
If there was ever a time for articulating the so-called voice of the customer, and using it to drive revenue in what can often feel like a tumultuous world, it's now.
Russell Parsons Editor, Marketing Week
Read the full report
The Line in the Sand has been designed to be shared. Use the Sweetspot and the ten questions to start the conversation with your team, bring them into your next away day or planning session, and take them to colleagues beyond marketing too.
Download the report here
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