Marketing and Finance: Creating Shareholder Value

Foreword

by Anne Godfrey, Chief Executive, CIM

‘Marketers in the boardroom’ has long been a call from those who see marketing as a strategic process rather than the tactical one that is often its fate. However, one glance at the boards of the FTSE 100 and it is clear that we are still some way from that being ‘the norm’.

That said, I would be surprised if marketing wasn't in the board room, just in another guise. Many of the topics that marketers discuss are so important to an organization that it is hard to see boards not having them on their agenda. Worryingly however many of these processes are given to other areas of the business to manage. So, why is that?

Our experience has shown that there is a combination of forces that lead to professional marketers finding themselves out in the cold at Board level. The first is a fundamental misunderstanding of what marketing is, and the value it can bring to a company, by those in leadership positions. Communications and advertising is the first thing people associate with the ‘m’ word but those in the know understand that this is only part of what a professional marketer has to oversee; it's the visible tip of the marketing iceberg.

The second force is marketers themselves who are sometimes guilty of exacerbating this narrow view of our profession by focusing on the areas that people enjoy and shying away from the business language that their CEOs expect to hear. A sprinkling of buzz words and leaning on the intangible will quickly ...