As the local marketer at the far end of this well-meant scheme I invested countless hours figuring out how to get around the stuff I didn’t like and how to get someone else to pay for the bits that were helpful. I’m sure that wasn’t what my corporate overlords had in mind, but that is the sad reality of a highly centralized marketing structure.
In exchange for consistent (sort of) branding, economies of scale, operational standardization and great processes, centralized marketing models have to put up with endless decision-making forced to the top of the organization, glacial reaction times to market conditions and field activation ranging from malicious compliance to outright sabotage.
Karma being what it is, not so many years later, I was the lucky soul dispatched to the outer reaches of a highly decentralized marketing organization to see what was up. What was up was the marketing version of “Heart of Darkness”. Re-imagined brand assets, little accountability for results, grossly inefficient production and a brand value proposition that bore little resemblance to what was on the plaque in the lobby back at headquarters. Let’s just say some binders were printed.
Some brands manage to pull off the centralization model: Coca-Cola, Apple and even the International Olympic Committee have legendarily rigid marketing, driven from the top of house. At the other end of the scale we have Yahoo, most car companies and license-based brands such as Best Western that push most of their marketing straight to the front line. In the B2B world, it’s very common to have separate field marketing organizations for vertical markets or global sales channels rather than straight-up geographic divisions.
Most of us, however, have to figure out life in the messy middle of these models, and I would suggest that if you’re struggling, you probably have your balance wrong. In a hybrid model, we want to preserve the market intimacy, quick reaction time and flexibility of off-leash marketers with the need to keep a good hold on brand and product strategy and some effort toward making the whole thing efficient.
To my thinking the two models come together at the point where big decisions need to be made. The tools we need to make decisions and to be held accountable for what happens next need to be shared resources. So we should be building centralized data warehouses, inventory systems, standard marketing automation and measurement tools and a shared view on market intelligence. The central contribution is in the form of infrastructure and the resources to make that work for the front-line marketers. Front-line marketers need to suck it up and play nicely with the centralized tools while pushing back a steady stream of market insight.
Making this work out of the gate is the easy part – enough time and money will get that done. The CMO who can pull this off over the long term is the one who builds a culture around listening to and engaging the marketers closest to the customer. Plus a new mug is always nice.
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Is it a Beautiful Day in Your Brand’s Neighbourhood
BizMarketer is Elizabeth Williams
You can reach me at escwilliams@gmail.com
or follow me on Twitter @bizmkter
Nice blog! Question about marketing and sales working together for the unified good of the company – all too often we see that they are not in synch (I’ve seen my share of resentment between the two groups), however to achieve the best results they really need to work in harmony… any examples of companies who get this right?