The absence of marketing professionals from many boardrooms is a “remarkable” and “worrying” problem, the CEO of Camelot UK Lotteries has said.
Andy Duncan, who has worked as the BBC’s director of marketing and chief executive of Channel 4, said too many CEOs fail to see the link between advertising and business success.
“20 years ago the view was that it would only be a matter of time before marketing would be much better represented at the board table,” Duncan said. “In reality it’s probably gone slightly backwards, which is quite a surprise.”
Duncan cited research from the US that revealed that of the top 1,000 companies, only 34 had marketing directors on the board.
“In the UK there is a slightly higher rate,” he said, “but in many cases the marketing director reports back to some other director who sits on the board – and that feels fundamentally wrong.”
Duncan, who is also the president of the Advertising Association, added: “Somewhere along the way marketing has lost its wider business credibility.”
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Speaking at The Big Think 2015, an annual event organised by the marketing body for television, Thinkbox, Duncan said a range of issues have limited marketing taking a seat at the top table, from an overuse of jargon to the way marketing directors interact with the wider business.
“Marketing has an image problem, which is bizarre,” he said.
“Too many marketeers talk in jargon. They talk in terms that the rest of the business can’t understand and it’s a really serious problem. It gets in the way of being taken seriously.”
Mediocre briefs, a tendency to choose creativity over effectiveness and slow decision making are also holding marketing back, Duncan said.
“Nearly all great campaigns, at their very heart, start from a piece of consumer insight; it’s a fundamental thing marketing needs to prioritise and champion…then it can create effectiveness.
“But creativity for its own sake is, frankly, meaningless. The creativity has to be harnessed by insight and a business need.”
Whilst working for the BBC, the then director general, Greg Dyke, gave Duncan, and thus marketing, a place on the board for the first time. Duncan said he was unlikely to have taken the job otherwise, and it is a prime example of marketing being viewed as a broad strategic discipline and an investment rather than a cost.
Duncan added that marketers should be the “best friend” of the CEO and that marketing directors in particular should act like a “glue” around the business, “networking and connecting with other directors.”
In particular, given the digital landscape most businesses now operate in, marketing departments should be close to data and technology departments, Duncan said.
“Too often, marketing is viewed as a narrow function without the ambition to get involved in wider [business] issues.”
