In theory, the equation for marketing success is simple. Just add a strong strategy to excellent execution and wait for the cash register to start ringing. But in practice, Asia’s marketers often find that the complexities inherent in both their own organisations and in the diversity of the region’s markets place very real limits on the success that they can hope to achieve.
Or so, anyway, says a new study commissioned by Media from Deloitte Consulting, titled ‘Marketing effectiveness in Asia’. The report surveyed senior marketing leaders from 15 of Asia’s most prominent MNCs via hour-long face-to-face interviews, to uncover the truth about running effective marketing organisations.
Perhaps the most eye-opening finding thrown up by the report reflects the continuing battle that marketing departments must wage internally. For a function that is conventionally viewed as looking outward, it appears that marketers are being forced to spend as much, if not more, of their time focusing on challenges within.
“The major inhibiters to effectiveness were internal management and planning issues, rather than a lack of ability to develop good strategy,” says outgoing Deloitte sales and marketing effectiveness practice leader Dominic James. “The reason this is surprising is that marketing is considered a predominantly externally-focused discipline. The implication is that marketers will not be successful by relying on external capabilities alone.”
Indeed, James points out that the relationship between the marketing department and senior management is the biggest factor in influencing marketing effectiveness. “Without it, marketing doesn’t deliver what the business needs, marketers find it difficult to obtain sufficient budgets or resources, and marketers themselves are unable to justify their true value.”
Electrolux regional SVP of marketing Laura Ashton agrees, but notes that marketers have only themselves to blame if they are marginalised. “Individual marketing activities that fail to gain support and traction in a company are almost inevitably initiatives that are off-track strategically,” says Ashton.
“The credibility of the marketing function to company management is also a function of how accountable they are. Marketing must have targets and KPIs that support strategy, and are well understood and supported by leadership. Otherwise, marketing will not have a place at the table, will be considered ‘fluffy’ and will invariably see its resources curtailed.”
Those resources are critical, given the range of specific strategy and execution challenges arising in Asia. With many companies possessing highly complex structures and uniformity lacking across Asia’s disparate markets - marketers, it appears, are thinking up stop-gap solutions to the problems that are being posed.
One key challenge, for example, is a shortage of strategic talent, with 80 per cent of respondents facing severe recruiting difficulties because of the demands of a rapidly-growing and diversifying marketplace.
The solution used by many marketers is to build a specialist strategic team with responsibility across geographies and, sometimes, business units. “Keeping country-level top talent motivated beyond their pay packet, for example, could see them involved in multi-market projects that give them more exposure to regional issues and stretch them beyond their local comfort zone,” says Ashton.
Another difficulty is the lack of good market information across Asia. In particular, respondents noted that macro-views of the region are often irrelevant, and that investment in data for small markets is cost-prohibitive. Some solutions include aggressive in-market testing, scenario planning and investment in internal knowledge management.
For adidas regional chief executive Christophe Bezu, it is the third of these which is most important. “We have now a platform for more than 1,200 users and the number is growing every day,” said Bezu. “The subjects and themes on knowledge management are as diverse as category management, sales programmes and account relationship, sports marketing and our knowledge platform now supports our marketing intelligence and business intelligence platforms.”
Sun Life Financial VP of strategic marketing Rob Burr agrees, noting that his company is aiming to sidestep the information issues by creating its own regional insights division, headed by former TBWA planner Alex Daniel.
The third key strategic issue, meanwhile, may be the one that offers the most effective solution. An inability to get to grips with the bewildering variety of Asia’s markets means that many marketers build strategies for clusters of similarity rather than, presumably, more traditional geographical sub-regions. Burr notes this practice approvingly, pointing to American Express as an example of a company that has used it successfully.
Bezu also agrees that the approach is useful, but warns that it should not come at the expense of savvy localisation. “It is certainly the quickest way to secure major fundamentals for revenues, but we do tailor-make a lot across the region - we have creation centres specifically for Japan and China,” says Bezu.
Neither are executional issues any easier to resolve, despite the common perception of Asia’s strength in this regard. To begin with, making local execution teams focus on regional priorities remains a fiendishly difficult task, particularly if the right structures and KPIs are not in place. “We align priorities between regions and countries,” adds Bezu. “We have elements of control in the execution measured by ROI analysis, brand equity and trade surveys across all the regions.”
Adding another layer of difficulty is the problem of resource allocation across multiple markets, with many clients attempting to ensure that resources are spread optimally by better modeling. But it appears that these strategies are still at a very nascent stage. “We introduced an Asia-Pacific-wide marketing planning process last year which is now in its second cycle,” says Ashton.
“It helps ensure that our teams are focusing on the highest priority, highest-impact activities and launches. It has also helped local teams understand the big picture better, reduce and eliminate non-strategic distractions and has stimulated their appetite for successful practice sharing and collaborative working on multi-market or regional initiatives.”
“Resources are a permanent debate and were allocated in a yearly discussion at the budgeting period,” adds Bezu. “Simplifying our priorities to align with KPIs allows a better view, transparency and to focus on resources allocation. We are now putting in place tools to assess the value creation in any initiative. This will allow even further investigation which we need in order to allocate resources.”
Michael Johns, senior partner of GroupM marketing effectiveness unit ATG, notes that when it comes to resource allocation, marketers would be wise to start off thinking small. “Instituting organisation-wide marketing resource models is expensive, time-consuming and difficult to implement,” says Johns.
“I recommend that marketers start off small with a solution focused on their brands using marketing-mix modelling analysis. Having a central marketing dashboard to help manage the entire marketing process is also very effective at continuously weeding out inefficiencies in marketing investments.”
Then, of course, there is that perennial bugbear: the role of agencies in ensuring that marketing plans are implemented well. The study reveals that respondents are less than impressed with the performance of their agency partners, resulting in a model that sees many pick one single agency and cherry pick the others for niche services.
“Agencies need to adapt to the new world of consumers, particularly in Asia, where digital has changed the rule of the game and the speed for decision making,” points out Bezu. Burr, however, is a little more sanguine. “Overall, TBWA have been great for me over the last three years,” he says. “It has not always got it right, but there has always been a Plan B available. I tend to buy specific skills and human resources, only half of which has been creative-based over time.”
Ultimately, however, it is clear that marketers cannot blame agencies for all of their woes - particularly in light of the often immense internal challenges that they face. “I think there is a lack of talent on both sides of the mix,” points out Burr. “(What is important is) a culture that encourages continuous testing to improve marketing results. Don’t be afraid to fail.”
Effectiveness: Is your agency accountable?
On the agency side, there is increasing awareness of the need for effectiveness metrics that are of genuine value to both the agency and client.
“There’s a misunderstanding about effectiveness. Some people think it just means measurement,” explains Ogilvy & Mather Asia-Pacific planning and effectiveness director Tim Broadbent.
“So we would go about the process of developing creative work the way we have always done and then measure its effects afterwards, like an accountant doing last year’s books.
“But why bother?” asks Broadbent. “The marketing money has already been spent.”
Instead, Broadbent notes that the real purpose of effectiveness is different. “We should evaluate the last campaign in order to do better next time. Effectiveness in this sense is an exciting, forward-looking activity.”
This, adds Broadbent, was why account planning was invented in the first place. “Planners were created to understand why great work is particularly effective. People may have forgotten, but the revolution in creative quality caused by the rise of account planning started from an effectiveness agenda.
“Effectiveness gives consumers a voice in the creative development process,” notes Broadbent. “That’s obviously a good thing for creative standards, because consumers dislike ugly, boring and patronising work even more than we do. Good work doesn’t have to be bad.”
Accordingly, Broadbent points out that effectiveness must start right from the beginning of the creative process, with the creative brief.
“And another part is to make evaluation routine, so it becomes ‘the way we do business here’.”
