With ad dollars heavily scrutinised by the CEO/CFO, agencies must give marketers ‘fire power in the boardroom’
There is a growing impetus amongst media agencies to provide their clients with tangible ROI metrics for marketers to take to their boards, amidst increasing pressure to justify spend, and many marketing roles now losing their seats at the top table.
Speaking on a panel at Mumbrella’s Audioland recently, “What a Buyer Wants From Audio” saw managing partner at Speed, Ian Perrin, national managing director of Initiative, Sam Geer, Dentsu Media CEO Danny Bass and chief investment officer at Spark Foundry, Lucie Jansen, conclude what buyers want as being as simple as delivering exactly what their clients want.
“Two words that probably best sum up the marketing community at the moment: ‘nervousness’ and ‘caution’. Most marketers have been asked to do more with less. Everything is scrutinised now more than it has ever been,” said Bass.
“The marketing function is being detached from the board room more and more. Very few CMOs are on the board anymore. So the decision to cut spend is usually driven by CFO/CEO.”
Bass continued that as agencies obviously “don’t want” spend to be cut, and it is their job to “give marketers fire power into the boardroom to talk about how we drive growth through marketing”.
Geer added that it was increasingly important for the audio industry to ensure that agencies were adequately educated on the broad offering of radio brands, and how these could be activated cost-effectively.
“I’m a big believer that radio and audio can play a role at every stage of the funnel. I’ve seen it be an exceptionally cost-effective way to drive mass reach for a lot of brands that don’t have the budgets that TV requires,” he said.
L-R: Ian Perrin, Sam Geer, Danny Bass, Lucie Jansen, Diana Di Cecco
He said that “all audio brands right now have a huge cross-platform integrated offering” that could be activated at scale in a cost-effective way, but that this was being underutilised.
Bass agreed, adding that the radio industry had “changed so much and so quickly, that the education piece hasn’t quite caught up with it.”
He suggested that radio needed to “reframe its story”, and needs to remind advertisers of the intimacy that listeners have with the music, and with the host that they listen to.
Of course, it is in the interest of the broader industry for marketers to be empowered to justify their spend to the rest of the c-suite, with AANA CEO Josh Faulks urging businesses that “now is not the time to be cutting marketing budgets” when speaking on the Mumbrellacast in February.
In the same month, Mumbrella’s Damian Francis penned a short analysis on whether the CMO role was on the way out for The Weekend Mumbo, you can read it here.
Danny as a ceo you can’t just make it up (as a chief investment officer that’s the job!)
Australian Institute of Company Directors found that the proportion of ASX 200 companies with at least one marketing expert on their board had increased from 36% in 2015 to 55% in 2020.
Marketers are starting to dominate the board rooms