Prepping marketers for the global market

CMO Africa has brought leading South African marketers together in one networking platform from most of the major banks, telecommunications providers and other key marketing companies. As announced three months ago, Bizcommunity.com has partnered with the CMO to bring the influential network to Africa. The global CMO network includes more than 3500 senior marketing decision makers in 52 countries, controlling more than US$90 billion a year in annual marketing spend. The council focuses exclusively on intellectual capital building through continuous engagement, funding studies and thought-leadership programmes on relevant and critical challenges and issues facing senior marketing management. It aims to collaborate with all other marketing bodies and shape thought leadership in the industry in Africa.

Neale-May, who caucused with many stakeholders in South Africa in the past year since deciding to launch CMO Africa, told Bizcommunity.com that there were two key issues for marketers in southern Africa: the issue of credibility within the organisation and a ‘boardroom voice'; and sourcing new talent for the marketing industry.

On the first point, Neale-May said the fact that organisations did not give marketers ‘a boardroom seat' was a credibility issue for marketers globally. “It's a perennial problem that won't be addressed overnight. The value that marketers deliver from a business standpoint is not being taken into account.” This included the segmentation of new markets, new revenue streams, alliances and partnerships, product portfolios...

“It has to do with marketing being a whole lot more than communications and branding, and about analytics, customer integration, market dynamics, metrics and measures.

The other area of concern is future talent, says Neale-May. There is a new generation of young people coming into the marketing ranks and the question, he says being asked, is whether they have the talent and attitude to be good marketers. “The general feeling is that university programmes are not developing young talent: there is a paucity of talent.”

Global training

Neale-May announced that some of the CMO marketers were willing to fund an international CMO marketing academy to train and prepare young marketers for the global market.

It was also important he said, for South African brands and services to be showcased abroad, particularly into emerging markets where some brands were doing well, and taking best practice developed in southern Africa and rolling it out into rest of Africa and other markets, such as Brazil, for example.

“Everyone is competing for talent. We can also export some of the best practices here. Clearly marketing innovation in Africa is something we should be shining a light on,” Neale-May emphasised.

“There are competencies that South African companies have developed that can be taken abroad to other emerging markets. The idea is to build a training programme that is very hands-on here, bringing in senior global marketers to help cultivate marketing executives in this country and develop younger echelon folk.”

The University of Johannesburg has been approached to run the programme and CMO Africa also has the support of Rhodes University.

Africa outreach

CMO Africa is also very keen to grow representation in the rest of Africa and will be reaching out actively to get a representative view of Africa. There needs to be a high level interactive peer-to-peer transfer of knowledge, he said.

“We think we can be a catalyst to help this come together, to try activate this dormant repository of knowledge in the marketing industry.”

Neale-May added that it was important to note that CMO Africa was not another marketing association. “That is not our aim. CMO is by invite only, for leading marketers. We bring a different perspective, global best practice. We want senior strategic decision makers - and to engage them. Our programme is all about intellectual capacity. We want to invite the whole industry to participate. We also want to talk to business leaders on their views on marketing and deficiencies and requirements in the industry.”
CMO globally has dozens of affiliations and linkages with functional marketing groups (from mobile to direct) and in other verticals (travel, etc), and with other global marketing groups.

“We are a content channel. We capture knowledge and insight and work with senior marketing folks to define best practice, create models, and build advocacy programmes.”

Defining ‘marketing'

Neale-May, who based in the US, said there was a clear lack of understanding in South Africa as to what the marketing discipline was all about. “They are measuring the wrong things: PR people want to measure media exposure, number of clippings generated, but how does that impact selling cycle, product buying, my pipeline, my deal flow, number of enquiries, visitors to my website, etc? Just getting PR coverage for the sake of coverage doesn't mean you are influencing buyers. Advertising people always want to sell agencies - they don't want to use hard core business metrics as they know they can't really support the spend that way; and marketers want to measure brand equity, customer retention, etc, not hard business data, which is why they get shot down by their CEOs.

“Marketing includes market share, revenue gains, stock price moves, customer affinity, customer churn, attachment, customer acquisition... Do you have a strategy for penetration? What is your strategy for growing customer share?

“A lot of what I'm talking about does not require advertising spend - more heavy lifting from the front end is required. One doesn't have to spend big bucks today to be more precise and surgical. There are a variety of different personalisation programmes with better returns, more precise and efficient engagement with the market. Agencies don't want that. Their business model won't support that level of drilled down analysis. The first thing agencies ask is ‘what's your budget' and then craft their campaign around that!”

There is conflict between the agency business model and client interest which had to be dealt with, Neale-May said, as the marketplace was changing and a whole new crop of technology driven marketing service providers were easing agencies out the picture because they have built systems to generate measureable deal flow.

Implode the structure

“Marketers need to understand that the train is leaving the station and they need to get on it or they will be disintermediated. Agencies are scrambling to get on it as there are a whole new crop of interactive, more flexible agencies out there.

“Internationally we are imploding that structure, imploding functional fiefdoms where everyone is competing for a different piece of budget. It is all about having a master strategy based on a dose of customer analytics and real-time tracking and monitoring of conditions to be constantly agile and adjustable to know where to direct dollars and which platforms to support. Marketers need to go back to the customer, so when you go into a boardroom, you're going in there with strategy, analysis, thinking-based and grounded in substance, not emotion or creative flash. Lots of business is based on creative accolades that are not based on converting business to transactions.”

Concluding, Neale-May said CMO Africa was challenging the status quo of marketing innovation in Africa, challenging marketers to think differently.

CMO Africa founder and facilitator, Kerryn-Leigh Anderson, commented that she was very excited with the high level of attention the CMO Council has already received from the industry and the commitment from senior marketers in the country. “We'd like to see additional representation from some of the other market sectors over the coming months, in particular FMCG, financial services, retail, motor and healthcare. In addition to growing sector representation, our next phase of growth is going to be expanding our board to include representatives from all African countries and I'd like to see this happen by year end.”

She said key outcomes from discussions with marketers and influencers over the past week have highlighted a number of areas where a combination of insight and action is needed, ie, the serious need to address the lack of and level of marketing skills in the country, the need for accurate information on the untapped emerging market and emerging economies, and marketing as an equal partner at the boardroom table.

For more:

• Press office: Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council