Retuning the Marketing "Orchestra"

Marketing's performance, too, is less than stellar. Brand growth has been stagnant for the past decade, particularly for legacy brands. The portfolio of agencies has been increased, each agency "best in class" in its area of expertise -- TV, radio, print, direct marketing, PR, events/sponsorship, website design, e-mail marketing and social media -- but there's something missing in the way that the agencies play together, like the discordant Bach orchestra.

It doesn't matter if you have the best players in the world. Their playing needs to be coordinated.

One problem is the length of time that the orchestra plays together under the conductor. CMOs, who are blamed by CEOs for the lack of brand growth, turn over every 3-4 years, and their replacements tend to change some if not all the resident agencies. Each CMO has a unique style, and it takes some time for CMOs to come to grips with the brand-growth problem and coordinate the marketing efforts accordingly. Often, CMOs are not in place long enough to make a difference.

A second problem is the nature of the Scopes of Work -- the musical scores used by the individual agencies. With the increasing use of digital and social media, Scopes of Work are becoming more fragmented and distant from the big ideas that ought to define or influence their content. Individual agencies are asked to carry out highly tactical, high-volume efforts that may not contribute in the slightest way to rekindle brand growth. This shows up in the kinds of "missions" that individual agencies are given on behalf of their clients.

Here's a not-so-unusual mission for a digital agency, working for a new client in a highly competitive industry: To be an innovator in the digital space. To go from channel extension to channel invention; to outmaneuver competitors and break through in a cluttered environment.

The assumption is that more and better digital innovation of this type will eventually translate into improved brand performance. The jury is out on that issue, as it remains to be proven. Digital and social innovations hold great promise, but there are problems with these media forms, as well.

The more that the portfolio of agencies is fragmented by specialty, the more likely that agency "missions" will devolve into multiple tactical wish-lists that don't add up to a coherent whole.

If improved brand performance is the goal, then the players in the marketing orchestra need to have the right sheet music in front of them. The master Scope of Work (if it exists), which covers the range of media types, needs to have an overall logic, just like an orchestral score. The competence of the individual players is not the issue; the bigger question is how do they sound when they play together, each mastering its part?

The results to date have been disappointing. Marketing departments have not done a good job coordinating their ever-increasing portfolios of agencies and designing, with or without their help, master Scopes of Work that have a high probability of growing brands once again.

Portfolio simplification is an obvious solution. The fewer the agencies, the more likely that the agency voice can be influential and agencies held accountable for broader, more strategic goals. Deborah Wahl, CMO of McDonald's in North America, went down this path last year, during her second year on the job, reducing her portfolio of U.S. agencies from "many" to "one" by establishing a new multidimensional Omnicom agency, We Are Unlimited, and setting its strategic mission as "increasing guest counts and sales." This must not have been enough for McDonald's top management; Deborah and other members of her team were replaced this week (April 5, 2017) with marketing leaders recruited from PepsiCo and Starbucks.

Good luck to them!

Cartoon Credit: Jack Ziegler, The New Yorker, The Cartoon Bank. With permission.

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