What It Takes

Marketers need intuition, planning skills, and creative tolerance. Ad agencies should just make good ads.

That’s the upshot of Anatomy of a 21st Century Marketer, a study conducted by recruitment firm Gundersen Partners, New York City. In-depth surveys of 54 top marketing execs covered three issues: upcoming changes in the competitive landscape, tools marketers will need to succeed, and the role ad agencies will play.

The results could send marketers and agency execs soul searching – in opposite directions. Marketers will reach deeper to tap innate talents. Agencies will quit reaching, and get back to their core expertise.

The road back is through the same skills that marketers need, says study author Ed Tazzia, managing director of Gundersen’s Cary, NC, office. “Marketers want to work with their intellectual equals who know as much as they do about their business. Agencies have to prove their added value, because they’re not considered intellectually talented right now.”

Survey respondents predictably described the environment as increasingly competitive, since technology opens markets worldwide to anyone. Stronger retailers squelch brand differentiation. Niche marketing evolves to the extreme of on-demand customized production. As one exec put it, “In the old days, the big ate the small. Now, the fast eat the slow.”

Respondents singled out seven skills senior marketing execs need to master in that tough environment (See story pg 35). Most are classic leadership skills, but the growing complexity of business makes them more crucial than ever. Gundersen points out that at least three skills can’t be taught: vision, intuition, and innovation. The search firm recommends companies identify and nurture these qualities.

“The real question is, how do you not kill talent?” Tazzia says. “It’s hard for big firms to show employees that risk-taking is valued. We advise leaders to make sure talented folks work for the right people. And if a manager squelches too many risk-takers, blow them up publicly to show the company understands the value of risk. Then teach staffers how to manage risk, rather than avoid it.”

Survey respondents didn’t consider promotion expertise as a high priority. Total marketing knowledge – “knowing the difference between true consumer promotion and price discounting or trade spending” – was ninth on the list with a 2.1 ranking (on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being highest). Trade, sales, and channel experience ranked 11th with a 2.3 score; loyalty marketing ranked 16th with a 2.8.

“We assume that once a marketer reaches top management, he has those executional skills,” Tazzia explains. Plus, lower-level staffers handle promotion details.

THE ADD RAP.

Marketing execs have stern advice for ad agencies: “Stick to your knitting and don’t worry about . . . losing ad revenue to other forms of communication.” When Gundersen asked execs what role agencies should play, the overwhelming answer was to create ads that sell, period. Fully 41 percent of respondents said specialty marketing services are a bigger threat to ad agencies’ business than the consultants most agencies fear (and that only 20% of respondents cited). One exec told Gundersen, “You see the emergence of really high-powered promotion houses, direct-mail operations, sports marketing groups who . . . do a better job in their area of expertise than virtually any agency.” (One caveat: This issue was the lowest priority among 22 subjects for survey respondents.)

Clients don’t siphon money from ad budgets to pay consultants, but they are shifting ad dollars to promotion and other disciplines, Tazzia explains. Still, “the big money is in boardroom-to-boardroom contact, and marketing services don’t have that like ad agencies do.”

Gundersen interviewed execs last summer, and released its survey in June. Its base was marketing execs at primarily $1 billion-plus companies marketing consumer goods, many of them worldwide.

What marketing leaders need to succeed.

1) Strategic vision and process. It’s not enough to know where a brand should be. A leader needs to know how to get it there. “You can’t teach vision, but you can teach process,” says Ed Tazzia, managing director of Gundersen Partners’ Cary, NC, office.

2) Intuition and ability to react. Tight time frames preclude traditional analysis. Execs need to size up a situation quickly and act, revising their approach as the market dictates. Gut feelings can’t be taught, but they’re easy to kill – a huge mistake, Gundersen asserts. “If companies don’t find the means of encouraging their gifted employees to trust their judgement, they will have no leaders in the future, because the market will not allow them the luxury of gathering and analyzing data.” No guts, no glory.

3) Change agent. These folks will be at a premium as they escalate the rate of evolution.

4) Creativity and innovation. Leaders need to nurture innovation in themselves and staffers. Creativity can’t be taught, but it should be “tolerated,” Gundersen concludes. “When I used to deal with creatives as a brand guy [at Procter & Gamble], my biggest fear was giving them too much direction,” Tazzia adds. “That’s hard for a brand guy who wants to control everything. But a creative pitching ideas exposes himself to [what he sees as] a room full of cretins, and one wrong word and you’ve lost that creative forever.”

5) Desire for accountability. This isn’t the buck stops here,” but “bring the buck to my desk.” Leaders see risk as challenge, and have confidence in their talents and people.

6) Communication. Marketers must present ideas well enough to get support, not just agreement.

7) Action. Execs no longer have middle managers to execute their ideas. Follow-through is a corner-office job.