Why Marketers Don’t Make the Boardroom - Thomas Barta

0:00Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Oncensored CMO. Now one question I'm asked all the time is how can marketers cut through in the board? We don't have enough marketers operating at top of organisations. It's really, really important that we learn not just technical marketing skills, but leadership skills to help us be better in businesses. So I'm joined today by a world expert on that subject, Thomas Barter, who's surveyed more people than I care to mention and has written the book on it too. He's got loads and loads of great advice and wisdom on how to do this. You'll love this episode.

0:29Here we go.

0:35Thomas Barter, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. So before we get into marketing skills, the book, the course and everything you're doing today, how did you get into marketing in the first place? I was six years old. My parents talked to me for the first time that they're really worried because I'm watching ads and not the films. And they were worried I wouldn't become an advertising person, which they, that's how they called it. Then I did. In fact, I became a marketer, joined Kimberly Clark, did proper fast-moving consumer goods. I was the marketing director, leading Kleenex household here in Europe, and I was so sick and tired of marketing.

1:14I thought, why is finance telling us what to do every day? So I'm out joining McKinsey, telling the CEOs how marketing really works, only to find out that they already knew that. But what was very interesting, when you then work for CEOs and CMOS, and you see everybody in the boardroom, you see what's going on. And you see that many chief marketing officers are super well-intended, extremely smart, clever, creative, perhaps not always connecting with the company. I felt like we have to change this, and that's why I stepped out of McKinsey after 12 years and do everything that helps marketers grow.

1:51Now, I remember when I made the jump to the C-suite CMO role in a board, something that totally shocked me was how little marketing gets discussed in the boardroom. I remember every month when we had our board meeting, the marketing section was kind of like the and finally at the end, John's going to show us his new labels. And it was a real wake-up call to realize the conversations around running a business are very different to the conversations you may have had before in your marketing team about the marketing you're executing in that particular month. So I'd be curious to know, what are the biggest surprises that you find marketers have when they kind of reach that level of wanting to get into the board?

2:32Well, you just described one of the big surprises, which, by the way, shouldn't be a surprise because you should know your target groups, right? That's what we do as marketers. but also that the short and the long-term challenge is real. It's not just the board being mean to you, not giving you the money. There is, you know, when you sit in that seat, you suddenly have to almost cut your own budgets by saying, maybe we have to do this here. But I think those are the two real surprises. Perhaps the third one, power plays a big role in the management team, and you have to apply that too. You're so right, Ash.

3:08I remember I was in a private equity situation and you realise actually that the decisions you're making when it comes to finances will be, do we give the factory floor a pay rise? Do we invest in a new factory? Do we spend money on supply chain efficiency and cost savings? So actually what you realise is that your budget and your spend is in the context of the overall business operating and you've got responsibilities to shareholders, to the bank, to pay back loans. and suddenly realize that you're operating in a much, much bigger context and that you have to position what you do in the context of what's in the best interest of the company, the staff, the shareholders, long-term success.

3:47And it really changes your mindset, you know, in terms of how you might sort of pitch. So maybe let me ask you this question then. What is the CEO looking for a CMO to deliver? Well, it's pretty simple. there's just a brand new study out that says it, that says exactly what it has always said, grow the business profitably, full stop. And it has said it in five different ways, and it always comes out as a high score. It's extremely simple. And all the rest is also important, but that's ultimately what CEOs want. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Fortune 500, global Fortune 500, 2023, industry grew by 0.1%, or not at all, as we say in Germany.

4:30And then last year was just a little better, 1.8. So growth is a challenge. And the CEOs are looking for people to change that. And that's what we're doing in marketing. Now, growth is hard, we know. What is it marketers are not doing well enough to communicate their contribution to company growth? Because one of the things that I noticed, I mean, we had Chris Burgrave actually on the podcast last year. He was CMO AB InBev. And he's looking into the representation of CMOs or people with marketing experience on the board. The numbers are shocking. I mean, really shocking. They're absolutely tiny, the number of marketers that actually make it onto the boards.

5:05Yes. So what's going wrong? Because as marketers, we represent the customer. We come up with strategies. We deliver, we create demand in the marketplace. So what's going wrong? Why are we not cutting through? Well, there are two boards here, right? There is the operating management team. And that should definitely have a marketer. And even if the CEO is the marketer, it doesn't matter. Someone needs to look at product, price, place, promotion. And ideally, that's a chief marketing officer. And that is, I think, an important goal that we get there. Supervisory boards is a different story. It's not operational.

5:42They think about more, you know, there's legislation and, you know, talent questions. So I think structurally, marketing will probably never be like a big role in supervisory boards. And I think we should be just okay with that. But we should be in the management team because that's what marketing is. It's about finding customers, creating growth, and what marketers aren't doing quote-unquote right or could do better. For the 12 powers of a market leader, the book, through the research we've done, 68 ,000 assessments of people, large-scale sculling. We figured that the best marketers do two things.

6:19One is they understand and serve customer needs, but they also understand and serve the company needs. So there shouldn't be a surprise about what's happening in the boardroom. You should know that. And if you put that together, you get into this what we call the value creation zone. And that's where you as a marketer will have power. And it's a very easy benchmark. You can tell if you have it or not, if you're in the V-Zone or not, because if you're in the V-zone, they won't cut your budgets because you're seen as relevant. It's funny, I remember the CEO of a company I used to work for describing marketing as a discretionary spend.

7:01And I thought that phrase was quite interesting because discretionary suddenly means it's not essential to the mission. And it really struck me because it makes the point you're making. If your marketing is aligned to the company goals and the company mission, why would you not get support for that, right? Same study I mentioned. What does the CEO want? The CEOs rated 150 American CEOs rated their CMO. They could give them an A. Four creates growth. The rating this year, 20 % got an A. So if that is the truth, you are no longer revenue, you are cost. So can I just clarify that exactly with that statistic?

7:43So you're saying that only 20 % of CEOs rated their CMO as delivering growth for the company. Is that the right way to interpret it? Yeah, the question was, do you give your CMO an A rating? Oh, as in a top rating for abilities. Exactly, for growth. And 20 % got that. They didn't ask for B and C and D ratings. But the point is, as a marketer, there's only two choices. You ask a cost or your revenue. people don't put you like in between and if you're not seen as deriving revenue and we can come to how you do that and this has to do with internal marketing has to do with language has to do with we have to give up a lot of the terms we're using then you are not seen as discretionary because it's clear that you're developing growth and people will invest in you but if it's unclear better cut you then it's discretionary and nobody should be discretionary then you know just go home don't do the job I mean, we don't need you.

8:39All right. So break down for me, like, what are the tactics that marketers should deploy to get, make sure that they are delivering? So a number of things. The first one is actually generally delivering. So think about all the work you do and think, is this actually driving growth? Now, we can come to long term and short term in a minute. There's a huge debate on, but ultimately this needs to be the aim. Number two, language. In the boardroom, nobody cares about segmentation and programmatic. This is detail. The question is, are you able to connect? So, for example, if the board is really worried about certain markets, say like we're losing it in China or something like that, can you connect the work to that problem?

9:28Make the connection. And then third, we need to have clearer language. You know, there's growth, there's revenues, there's customers. Everybody understands this. And we need to be able to translate this. And then ideally, that's why I advise CMOs, sit down with the CFO and do it jointly. Just imagine the CFO would present your numbers. Standing would change. But then people are afraid because maybe they find out it doesn't work. But look, you're going to have an agile debate. And CEOs are not stupid. I'll tell you one example of this I absolutely loved. I was at Cannes a couple of years ago, and Jen Chase, she's the SAS CMO, did a presentation with her CFO.

10:10But what was brilliant, and I thought absolutely a masterstroke, she got her CFO to present and explain the marketing theory and why it mattered. And you could see the CFO excitedly engaging with this marketing and telling the story. And I just thought, that is brilliant. If your CFO is explaining why you should invest in marketing, you've done the job. You know what I mean? And I think so many marketers see the finance department as almost the problem that, you know, the people don't mention what we're doing to the finance team sort of thing. But actually getting the finance team embedded in what you're doing, getting them to do the evaluation, getting them to tell your story is so powerful.

10:47I can't agree more. And many CMOs do that. Jim Farley at Ford, he's now CEO, did that for years. And it's extremely powerful tool. And we have a class, it's called Marketing Leadership Masterclass, where we're teaching people in 12 weeks the principles of getting budgets, getting by and mobilizing people. And it's one of the key tools. And as you say, people get really nervous because they kind of have budgets. Yeah, but it's about an adult conversation. Building on the CFO and CMO kind of relationship, what else could CMOs do to build that relationship with the CFO to help them become more successful, do you reckon?

11:30We already talked about some of the key principles. At the end of the day, the CEO and the CFO need to see that the marketers are part of the same team. You're not something different. You're not some special department. You're not like you have your own language. You need to be part of the team. And I think the more you can demonstrate that. And that also means sometimes you've got to take one for the team. If the company isn't in trouble, it's just not a good idea to ask for lots of cash to throw at something if you're part of the management team. But I think if people get those things right, and I think that's what we see when people come out of the marketing leadership masterclass.

12:10By the way, so Sarah, former CMO of Diageo CBE, she's a good friend, and we're running this together. And that's what people tell us, the ones that a year later come back and say, you know what, I made that step. I had a presentation. I got everybody involved in my plan. I had the CFO present my plan. And by the way, I connected everything to what the company is actually doing. It's a complete game changer. Yeah, I love that. It's a great summary, isn't it? Connect what you're doing with the company mission, position it in the language of the boardroom and the CFO, and then get other people to tell the story and kind of, you know, share the vision with you, rather than the vision being yours, the vision that is then ours, isn't it, as a company.

12:52And then that helps bring people on the journey. I love that. That's really, really, really clear. One question I should ask at this stage as well, like we're always talking about the CMO tenure, right? Everyone's kind of going, oh, the CMO's got the shorter tenure on the board. I'm not too worried about the actual current tenure. By the way, the tenure has actually gone up recently since a steward change to Fortune 500 from the appetizers. So the whole thing has calmed down. So by the way, if everybody's still thinking CMO tenure is terrible, it's not. It's actually stable, slightly going up.

13:24And it's a dynamic role. So I think the tenure worries me a little less. What worries me is the reputation that we in marketing create around that tenure because there's so many wonderful people in having top CMO jobs, doing fantastic work. and the news get the people who get fired or some tenure studies. Many CEOs hire marketers and have some fantasy ideas about what they're supposed to do, and then they forget that again. So, yes, the expectation management is so crucial. So as a marketer, almost every single day you have to think, like, no, they don't know exactly, and we have to remind people and we have to agree and we have to be doing it.

14:01So we can't just rely on that one brief and then for five years try and do the work, which is very crucial to do. So, yes. But that's the same with customers. You know, you never complain that customers don't understand your product. I mean, you just go back and do better marketing and just do the same internally. One thing I think marketers need to do, marketers need to market marketing much better than they do today. And, you know, it's a bit like doctors not taking their own medicine, right? Because we are experts at communicating, you know, our products and proposition. Why can't we explain the role of marketing?

14:34In fact, one of the reasons I do this very podcast is I want marketers to be armed with all the ammunition they ever need to make the case for marketing. And it's obvious. I mean, you think of the top marketers and the problem is, and I mentioned a few now, everybody else gets annoyed because I haven't. But, you know, Brent Smart, Telstra, you know, in Australia, very creative, more communications focused. But he helps grow that organization. Becky Brock, what she did at Costa, you know, driving is now at Tesco. We have Mark Given building a media agency for Sainsbury. And I have a luck, like a long list, or Mark Sands, what he did for Guinness.

15:08You're saving it during COVID. Bart Quinton Smith said, too. The issue is that we're creating so much negative noise around all of the great work. And here's my, can I bitch a bit? Okay, here's my list. Can we just not change the title every single week? So there's this chief marketing officer, product, price, place, promotion. There's a chief communications officer. That's when you only have one P, which is promotion. And then there's a chief operating officer. So then people start to give themselves new names like chief growth officer, chief this, chief that, chief this. And that's all because the company is frustrated that the CMO doesn't grow things.

15:50We just need to give it different names. Imagine the CFO doing the same thing. I'm now the chief money man. And everyone's like, are you mad? We have things like performance marketing. Just think about the idea. You take a small piece of marketing, which happens to be promotion, and then a small part of this, which is digital, and call that performance, which kind of means the rest, I mean, think about it, right, is not. Like, who comes up with this? And then we all talk about it and go to a conference, and I have a longer list. The problem is if marketing had a CMO, you'd almost need to replace that person with someone who, you know, gets it back to what we need to do.

16:28We need to grow the business. We need to help the company be more successful. And we need to explain it to the board in a way that they get it, like we do with customers and just cut the crap. Agreed. 100%. All right. So we've agreed on the role is growth, right? So just to be clear. Was that too negative? That is brilliant. Look, I love, you know, everything that I meet. I do smile, only because I did, I have to confess, I did change my title. So I was CMO, and I went to chief customer officer, only because, and I'll make my little case now. But Beau, I do agree. The only reason I did that was I was also in charge of sales at the time, and I wanted to signal to our customers that what I cared about was not marketing to them.

17:12I cared about them. And so I wanted to say my role is understanding our customer and representing you where decisions get made as opposed to selling to you sort of thing. But yeah. Yeah, but you had a bigger role than Seymour. In that case, yeah. Because it was a bigger role. It's changed now, but back then I was representing kind of like how we positioned ourselves to the customer as well as, because in B2B, in my case in B2B, the customer and the consumer are the same people. That's right. Whereas in most businesses, the consumer is not the same as the customer. So you have a sales department targeting the customer, and then you have a marketing department targeting the consumer.

17:47So in my case, the two were the same. Anyway, sorry, long explanation for my own job title there. It also shows people that we haven't agreed that before because I wouldn't have challenged you otherwise would have. No, no, generally in principle. And do you know what I called the podcast? Uncensored CMO. I didn't call it Uncensored CCO. So there you go. I can argue, I can even prove myself wrong. We agree. Even in this title. We agree. All right, all right. Sorry to interrupt this conversation. I promise you it's for a good cause. So I've just put a rather large deposit down on a very big venue in central London called the Outernet that can hold 400 people.

18:21It's an amazing venue. Now, we're going to be doing the very first uncensored CMO, The Calling. Now, what is The Calling? The Calling is your opportunity to join us live and be inspired by the world's best founders, the most inspirational CMOs, and the best thought leaders. This is one day that will completely transform your career. I promise it will be well worth it. I'm so excited to be doing this. And if you want to find out more details, please go to the show notes and check it out. And I really look forward to seeing you there. It's on the 21st of April. Do not miss it. Now back to the show.

19:01So Thomas, you've written the book based on 68 ,000 assessments, right? So there's a lot of data. You've written the book on the 12 powers of leadership. What would be your summary? What do marketers need to do differently as a result of reading your book? So the most important thing I mentioned earlier is the value creation zone. So you need to understand both the company and the customers. That's really big. And in fact, we call that upwards mobilizing. Hugely important. Marketing Leadership Masterclass is spending half of the time helping people lead upwards, which you never really learn anywhere.

19:36You don't learn in university, you learn teams and yourself and stuff. The other big part is the rest of the organization. So think about it this way, you live in a job where you have literally no power. Everybody can ignore you, right? If you have a good idea, the sales department can ignore you, engineers can ignore you, everybody can ignore you. So you need to find ways to mobilize sideways. And in the 12 powers, we found is that there's there are three distinct powers. The first one is, you need to have, of course, a changed story. And I don't mean like story selling, blah, blah, blah, but more like, what's the big idea that you want people to, you know, to dream with you?

20:19I mean, what do you want to really lead? The second one is you need to find ways to mobilize people walking the halls. There's a lot of hall walking. You know, when I hear people have the debate on whether they should work in the office or at home and then they agree on like oh let's do two and a half days the big question is an answer to you where are the decision makers and that's where I where I need to be if they're at home I can do zoom if not I need to work there and the third one is you need to be out there and show to people that you mean it serious you know are you in a shop are you in the stores are you doing that so those two pieces upwards and sideways Those are huge parts that will build the entire marketing leadership masterclass around that.

20:59And yes, there is teams, there is yourself. But if marketers get those things right, they have a massive amount of more power than currently. You're so right. You get much more influence over decisions, much more respect in terms of the role of marketing, much more likely to be successful. I want to move on, if I can, to something I think is quite important, which is, and let me see if I've quoted you correctly here. Fitting in is the safest way to fail. I love that quote. I love that quote because this is a big corporation thing, but in most big corporations, the game in town is how do you align yourself with the politics of the organisation, with the consensus around the group, with whoever's got the power in the room, right?

21:40Your job is mostly alignment, right? But actually, you're challenging that, I think, and saying actually the fitting in, in that sense, might actually not be the right thing to do. Just explain that a bit more, because I think there's something in there that touches on probably what a lot of people in marketing feel. So I just commissioned a massive piece of new research over the last five years by now on courage in business. Because here's the challenge I saw. We're doing all the work with the 12 powers and the Marketing Ship Masterclass, and we work with the wonderful Sophie Devonshire and the Marketing Society to make things, raise the awareness.

22:18But I felt we need to go deeper. So I'm running growth workshops with people and I felt there's something doesn't work here. People come up with small ideas, safe, and then they don't think about how we execute that. So I commissioned that piece and here's what we found. And just touring the world currently with keynotes and workshops on that topic. But here's the thing. Companies are not made for growth. If you think about it, you know, you have an idea and you do testing. Then come the politics and the budgets. Now we have rules and regulations and HR competency frameworks. You can tell the resistance has won when HR is adding another box to a 13-box competency framework to make sure everybody who's hired is average enough to fit the company.

23:04And then, of course, people are fearful. Think big, fail fast. It sounds great at conference, but failing a company is just annoyed. CEOs don't like failure. They like you to win. so that gets people to kind of like more fit in and do things now now come to research 3 000 people neural network model and we looked at oh i mean it's a really good it's not mine it's from i took the leadership model there we just put it in it and we found that 55 percent of someone's success in growth has to do with so i've got growth skills that means finding growth knowing where it is looking at finding bigger markets, looking much bigger at growth than people did in my early workshops.

23:50And the second one is 45%, which is mobilizing skills, moving people along, getting this done, telling the stories. Or you could say, you need to have a big idea and you never plan. Now, if you think about the profiles of people we found in this, there are four, right? You think about the axis, right? You have growth skills and you have mobilizing skills. So you have at the bottom left what we call the flow keepers. You don't bring big ideas and you're not really mobilizing the organization. You just do the work. And companies are full of flow keepers and they're really important. They keep it running.

24:31Of course, they're not growing the company. Then you have implementers. Do you know people where the CEO says, I'll give that to Nancy and she'll get it done. She knows everybody. And implementers are great. and are useful and CEOs love it. Then they're dreamers, big ideas, don't know how to move. So we've got plenty of those, right? And I always think like, ah, there's nobody listening to me. And then, of course, I call them gross rebels, the people who actually have both, big ideas, and know how to move the company. When you cut the data in a different way, you see that 60 % of all of these skills have to do with bravery.

25:09So like sticking out, making the case, showing when something is wrong, speaking up, having the guts to go out and present your idea even if people laugh at you. And the rest is management skills. Of course, you need them, right? You need to still work with teams and do all these things. And here's the twist. Fitting in is negative for growth. We can show that. standing out is also a little negative for gross. Why is that? Because nobody wants to work with a smart ass. You want to work with people who take you along. So the rebel challenge you have is you've got to find a big idea, which means you've got to think bigger than you currently do on gross.