“Marketers are sort of deer in the headlights right now,” says Jim Stengel, host of The CMO Podcast. Change is coming at them fast, and many end up chasing trends to keep up, which creates some fundamental problems, adds Ryan Barker.
Barker, founder of market intelligence company BERA, is hoping to give CMOs a new way forward. BERA is partnering with Stengel, the former global chief marketing officer of Procter & Gamble to launch a new podcast series this fall, “The Brand Builder’s Playbook,” in conjunction with Lindsey Wehking at Nonfiction Research and Cait Lamberton at the Wharton School.
Stengel, who hosts THE CMO Podcast, said marketers are buffeted by constant change challenging everything they know. “I think they’re wondering: How do I build a brand today? And was what I learned back at P&G – still relevant?” he said. “Is there a playbook? And if there is a playbook, what should be in it?”
Marketers have always had to be agile, but today they are pressed harder to sift signals from noise and execute on that knowledge, say the podcasters.
“If you look at the CMO’s job description over time, there’s always yet one more skill, and yet one more skill, and yet one more skill. Well, guess what? Technology can help bring that to their fingertips, but they still have to bridge the gap between marketing and finance,” said Barker.
Many experts think the era of brands is over, replaced by a focus on performance marketing, but Stengel begs to differ. “We’re all humans. We want to be aligned with something that meets our values, that says something about us. It represents who we are,” he said. “Brands are shorthand for that. They have always been. And I think at least in the foreseeable future, if we do our jobs well, it will continue to be that way.”
Stengel challenges the paradigm that places brand building and performance marketing apart. “Why doesn’t brand building build performance and why can’t performance build brand? I think that’s what a lot of companies get wrong,” said Stengel. He singled out Duolingo as an example of a brand that has done both well in tandem.
Branding and performance are “two sides of the same coin,” at Barker. Data has shown balancing both produces a “multiplier effect” that can improve revenue return on investment by a median of 90 percent.
“I think we as marketers have siloed those two groups. We are incentivizing them differently. They have different KPIs, but it’s really two sides of the same coin,” said Barker. “Performance marketing fundamentally works harder when it’s underpinned by strong brand equity. Without it, you’re basically overpaying to rent attention.”
One of the objectives of the podcast is to break down those silos, said Barker. The first episode tries to answer the question of why brands are important and their financial worth. Corporate boards often aren’t sure why brands matter, but CFOs appreciate the price flexibility they afford marketers.
“A CFO appreciates that you can take five, seven, 10 percent price increase and not take a hit in volume,” said Stengel. “When you start looking at brands through a financial lens, if a CFO is smart and curious, they get it pretty quickly.”
Impatient CFOs, stressed marketers
But CFOs like to measure things. Barker noted BERA’s FRMU model (short for Meaningful, Unique, Familiar, and held in high Regard) can gauge those dynamics to create a brand equity relationship assessment score that quantifies brand love. That score can be tied to behavioral data to build predictive models and show the linkage between brand perceptions and financial results. This can help CFOs who want to know the effect on sales and predict future behavior.
CFOs are impatient, and they have experience making projections of resource allocations for investors, but the brand has been neglected in those equations, said Barker.
“Brands can be as much, if not more impactful than things like product innovation, change in pricing strategies, distribution changes, or customer service,” said Barker. He added part of the podcast’s mission is to demystify those effects, “helping folks make the case to the board, to the C-suite, that brand is an asset. It is not an expense, and should be measured with the same rigor as Wall Street.”
The podcast episodes will explore themes such as why it’s important to build a brand, how to measure brand ROI and how to find the right mix of brand and performance marketing. Guests will include Chris Burggraeve, former CMO of Anheuser-Busch; Sandeep Seth, chief growth officer of Tapestry; Kristen Darcy, CMO and head of digital growth at True Religion; and Damon Berger, head of consumer digital engagement at Gap Inc.
Barker noted the podcast shows John Wanamaker’s famous adage – about not knowing which 50 percent of his marketing spend actually works – can be challenged by today’s marketers, thanks to the tools available to separate signals from noise and measure return on marketing investment. But he added that marketers need to change the paradigm for their jobs.
“Instead of chasing trends, invest in data and technology that picks up signals that are predictive of the financial metrics that you are focused on. Otherwise, it is too easy to get distracted,” said Barker. “Let’s determine the metrics that matter, that are predictive, and that will help provide clarity.”
Barker and Stengel argue it’s time to throw out the old playbooks. The basic job of CMOs hasn’t changed, but some aspects are demanding more attention in these unstable environments, said Stengel. “Right now, they’re spending a lot of time on their people, their organizations. People are stressed now. They’re tired,” he said. “Our people need to be reassured as much as they can that the company matters, the brand matters, their consumers matter, their work matters, and to spend an awful lot of time getting back to what’s important in our daily work.”
Strong communications skills can help provide them with that leadership, said Stengel. “People want to know how the business is doing, how you are doing. If you show up kind of stressed yourself, that’s a horrible signal,” he explained. “If you think you’re communicating enough now, triple it. And be honest. Be authentic. Show up the way you want to show up.”
Technology and tools such as artificial intelligence can be more than shiny objects if they help manage that communication, said Barker. “Keeping up with cultural tastes and values and expectations, things evolve so fast. This is where AI could help to keep more of a real-time pulse on that,” he said. “If we have only so much time in the day, understanding and prioritizing the highest ROI audience and diving into them is one way to remain focused and not get distracted.”
