The Future's Not Bright.....
And I am not just talking about the long term effects of the current pandemic and its impact on consumer behaviour…(I’ll come back to that and add to the noise another time…)
I’m talking about a chronic problem in marketing in Ireland that can be traced back to the last recession and even beyond. Marketing has been ravaged by fragmentation and starved of funding, forcing many marketing professionals to leave the market or engage in palliative care of their brands, endeavouring to keep a pulse in them as they supervise, what I call, brand fade. A vicious cycle of budget cuts, tough choices and often reducing results. Every decision becoming more important and focus shifting to short term effects so we can scream ‘look it worked!’, even though there is a creeping voice in the back of our heads, that sounds a lot like Les Binet, telling us we are making a big mistake.
The problem is not the marketing professionals in Ireland who are ‘finger to the bone’ miracle workers who can stretch a budget like an Irish Mammy’s dinner. The issue is often a lack of connection or understanding at the top about the potential for marketing to drive their business forward. Marketing needs more respect. It occasionally gets positive attention like when a kid does a rollover and gets a BIG WELL DONE!
Marketing is essential to business success and yet every year marketeers go Oliver Twist to maintain often already too small budgets. The future is not bright, unless we market marketing up the organisation and remind the senior management team about the role of marketing in driving business growth. Know the target (the CFO / CEO) focus on effectiveness, joining the dots for them and connecting marketing to business objectives and the bottom line. It’s shocking that this case still has to be made.
Effectiveness starts with a focus on business objectives and mapping those into marketing and communications objectives, setting KPIs and lining up action and investment behind them. If we can demonstrate effectiveness and efficiency, we can make our voice louder and our impact felt.
If you need help with effectiveness or efficient deployment of budget then talk to us.
hello@pt78.ie
+353 1 556 3678