Decideware

In a recent Blog entry entitled "The Marketing Organization – Can we manage it?" in ANA Marketing Musings, Bob Liodice (President and CEO of the ANA) made the following comments on Marketing Accountability.

"CMO’s have to seriously upgrade their credibility. As a function, marketing must continue to push for increasing levels of accountability across the entire marketing supply chain. Marketers are often disappointed due to a lack of credible metrics and measurements throughout the entire chain. A well-oiled accountability machine – that includes partnerships with Finance and an Analytics group – can provide increasing confidence that marketing does what it says it will do."

Blunt Tools

This concept of the "marketing supply chain" and its measurement is obviously very close to my heart. It is not surprising that CMOs do not have access to credible measurement and visibility. Most CMO's only have access to rudimentary tools used to monitor and measure agencies and these have been sadly lacking in bringing anything of great use to the CMO at a strategic level.

Fight the Good Fight

Your typical CFO has access to a wealth of information about their business processes. Comparisons of business units, benchmarking sales, budget trends, exception reports, global averages, normalized scores, capability assessments etc. They enjoy a very strong voice at the management table - armed with data to back-up their arguments and requests.

Why not your CMO?

Why then would each and every CMO not invest in exactly the same tool-set? Surely that would allow them access to the same armory of data that his or her peers have? And one of the cornerstones of marketing accountability should be the evaluation and rating of the performance of the company's key marketing agencies.

Now here is the provocative question - is your CMO being led to your company's management table without the appropriate tools to do his or her job?

Author: Richard Benyon (Decideware)