Board worthy marketers

What marketing professionals need to do to gain a seat on the board – Ruchi Gunewardene provides some answers


Over the decades, I have watched with great dismay, the dwindling number of marketers on the boards of companies. A scan across listed companies in Sri Lanka will shed light on the woeful shortage of senior marketing specialists in the boardroom.

It goes without saying that low board representation of marketing specialists due to the profession’s own shortcomings. Therefore, process driven strategic planning and financial accountability is the need of the hour.

Across many companies, the title of ‘Marketing Manager’ is being bestowed on those recruited for the purpose of taking charge of key strategic decisions related to driving revenue through consumer understanding and engagement. The reality is that most heads of marketing are solely focussed on communications and/or activations, which greatly diminishes their role in the business.

The fault lies with the marketing profession itself, due to its inability to impart a new set of skills to aspiring marketers that are relevant to these modern times. This in turn results in those vacant seats in the boardroom.

This challenge facing the marketing profession is similar to what it faced 50 years ago. At that time, it needed to redefine and separate itself from ‘sales,’ which is what most people thought marketing was about.

In turn, this led to the formation of the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) in 1970 by a band of enterprising marketers. They achieved their mission and sat on many boards across industries a few decades later.

The challenge today is somewhat similar with a need to redefine the role of marketing – one where the modern marketing manager is required to compete with other professions that have much greater acceptance in the boardroom.

There are several reasons for marketing professionals not being represented at the highest decision making level.

Abdication of responsibility – Marketing managers have relinquished responsibility to finance managers who have come out of the backrooms of accounting offices, and are much more adept and skilful at strategic decision making, particularly in relation to business development and growth.

Abdication of responsibility to advertising agencies – In many instances, the marketing manager is a coordinator with advertising agencies who have taken custody of brand development. This is due to the lack of a strategic approach and undue emphasis being placed on communications.

Lack of financial literacy – The board’s primary responsibility is to its shareholders, and marketers do not use financial analysis and justifications to support their strategic recommendations. As a result, marketers find themselves at the periphery of decision making as they do not speak the language of the board.

Strategic marketing Branding is a tool of marketing; it is not solely a communications and advertising function, which is what most people believe it is. A brand is simply a promise delivered, linking the business to the end consumer.

The starting point is a fact-based definition and positioning using an array of tools including research to be able to differentiate the offering. It is the point of intersection between hard data and strategic implications.

Defining a brand does not lie in an advertising slogan or a tag line. Instead, it encompasses the purpose and values on which the business operates. To develop this, deep insights are required not only around customers but through an understanding of the broader business vision. It’s therefore more multifaceted than what conventional textbook marketing may have you believe.

Therefore, companies should establish a  structured process that develops and manages the brand over the long term.

Bridging the marketing-finance gap In addition to taking back responsibility and being in charge of the brand with this holistic strategic view of the business, there must also be financial accountability.

This involves tracking how specific actions not only result in changing consumer attitudes (i.e. perceptions of quality, and emotional and functional attributes) but impact  availability, price sensitivity and revenue as well. Identifying the levers and most cost-effective way of delivering profitable brands is what a skilful marketing manager does.

Instead of budgets being handed over to marketing by finance, or being calculated on incremental increases over previous years, budget allocations should consider historical data while also estimating the rate of decay of brand equity of past investments over time, thereby justifying what is required across relevant initiatives.

Such information provides clues as to where investments should best be made – and how to maximise such investments based on the availability of funds.

These tools become the bedrock on which marketing accountability is established with revenue generation and return on investment at the forefront.

Getting back into business By taking over responsibility and being more accountable, the marketing manager is no longer dependent on the advertising agency to come up with a campaign on which he or she has pinned all his or her hopes.

At business strategy sessions, it is the marketing manager who should have the data to justify how revenue growth will be delivered, along with where marketing investments should be made.

This approach is what will pave the way for marketing to get back into business… and into the board room!