Digital Disruption A Matter of Emotion More Than Metrics

Managing staff and organizations is the biggest challenge faced by major marketers dealing with the disruption brought on by changes in the marketing ecosystem, said speakers at the Business Marketing Association’s annual New York regional conference.

Managing staff and organizations is the biggest challenge faced by major marketers dealing with the disruption brought on by changes in the marketing ecosystem, said speakers at the Business Marketing Association’s annual New York regional conference.

Marketers are faced with a constant call to transform their business models, they told attendees on Tuesday. But speakers also noted that transformation needs to focus less on data metrics and technology and more on emotion and talent management to spur innovation and creativity.

Issues of corporate culture loomed large for speakers, who pointed to the increase in marketing specialties and the rise of the Millennial demographic.

Marketing organizations need to hire and nurture talent that understands Millennials, while also focusing on practices from customer and user experience to mobile commerce and CSR—“job titles you would certainly not have seen on the job boards of Verizon years ago,” said event emcee Steve Chadwick, director of digital experience SMB at Verizon.

Changing organizational culture makes a difference in revenue, employee contributions, and marketing strategies, said Todd Kaiser, senior director and marketing insights strategist of the ANA. He presented the findings of an ANA CMO survey that showed how a customer-centric and marketing-driven culture relates to growing revenue and business success.

Only 49% of the CMOs in the survey said they had the right organizational structure to achieve growth, and nearly a third of companies identified as low-performing had no structure at all.

“It’s really stifling if you don’t bring in the skills needed in today’s world,” Kaiser said.

The good news is that 86% of CMOs plans to make change in their marketing organizations in the next two years, according to research from SiriusDecisions. Some of the key priorities include acquiring specialized skills or training existing staff in new skill sets, said Jennifer Ross, service director, marketing leadership strategies, at SiriusDecisions. But she noted that the more common challenges are how to adjust today’s structure for faster and more agile decision making and how to balance decentralization and centralization in that organization.

SiriusDecisions recommends a systematic approach that begins with defining objectives, auditing the organization for capabilities and gaps, developing a new blueprint and organization chart that’s not based on the legacy structure, creating benchmarks for before and after the reorganization, and communicating throughout what “shouldn’t be a one-and-done effort,” Ross said.

“It’s obvious transparency is key when making changes in the organization,” she said. “It’s tied to a lot of fear and anxiety. Everybody worries about change. It’s wrong to keep that so close to your breast.”

Agencies, too, need to adapt, noted Jean-Rene Zentreme, chief talent officer at Ogilvy.

“The ‘great fragmentation’ has arrived, with myriad platforms and channels that have to be factored in and many potential partners in each,” he said. Additionally, he noted, agencies deal more on project work and less in retainer work, so they have to adapt to this environment. Agencies also need to rethink talent acquisition, learning and development, diversity and inclusion, and compensation factors to hire and retain the right people.

“The talent function, as a whole, has evolved in the last 20 to 25 years,” Zentreme said.

Agencies need to go “from doer to enabler,” said Clark Scheffy, managing director of Ideo. Creativity is a large part of the process, regardless of the current focus on data and measurement, he said. Design innovation is responsible for many of today’s leading brands—such as Apple, Tesla, and Airbnb—and shows that creativity is still important, even if it is risky, he said.

“You can’t measure and manage to their next idea,” Scheffy said. Creativity in design is making things that don’t exist yet and can’t be measured, he explained.

Making those cultural changes will require a change in mindset for many, the speakers agreed.

“Change is hard, I know. I hear many stories about the agency model and how it’s been a bummer for a while,” Scheffy said.

Some organizations will find themselves blocked by one manager who can’t accept the change, by turf wars and legacy thinking, speakers said. Karin Jager, global marketing director at Merck Animal Health, told a story about joining an organization she didn’t know much about and facing a language barrier, but as she spoke to staff and customers, she found out there was one manager who blocked the organization with his attitude. Asking him to move on changed everything. “In a couple of months, everything was back on track,” Jager said.

It comes down to people, said Rob Morrice, CEO of Stein IAS. You may have to “sack anyone who’s not on board,” he said.

Phil Johnson, CEO at PJA Advertising + Marketing, said he has noticed a change during the past five years when interviewing prospective staff. More of them are saying that the corporate culture is important for them, rather than asking about salary or benefits up front, he said.

“Now it’s really adapting to this world where culture is everything,” he said.