There are moments when I see hints of Jackson Lamb in my father. Not that he was a spy of course. Nor that they once shared an unhealthy predilection for smoking, drinking and an undisguised pleasure in breaking wind. No, what links Jackson Lamb to my old man, other than a disheveled appearance, is craft. In Lamb’s case the tradecraft of spying, in my father’s the skills of a master craftsman, honed over years of application, and enhanced, surprisingly often, by training.

It’s always struck me odd that so many marketers today make so little time for formal training in their craft. Why is that? Ease? Arrogance? Surely not a lack of interest or curiosity?

When I started my career in brand building in the 90s, curiosity was one of the most important and valued traits. It was taken as a given in ambitious executives, a necessary virtue in becoming skilled and expert.

Do professional, modern marketers have that same hunger to understand all the issues, to go really deep into the heart of their business, their market, and understand their customers’ expectations and their company’s ability to meet or even exceed them?

If the company is serious about reducing cost and inefficiency having one central brand or marketing team with clear decision rights will become obvious.

Some do. But, sadly, many appear to be too busy worrying about AI, IoT, big data, agility, being digitally first, or just blindly worshipping at the temple of what Ritson terms “tactification”. Forswearing the art of strategy and thinking long – these being seen as too slow and dogmatic – one wonders if strategy is seen by many of today’s marketers as an anachronism typical of pre-digital thinking. Hmmm. Well, to each their own. But when it comes to building brands – which is my craft and trade – I have found that being trained on how to develop good strategy, and applying that knowledge to real-world opportunities, pays dividends.

Strangely, something no one learns at marketing school, or in classic marketing training, but a key driver of successful execution nonetheless, is how to structure, or restructure your marketing operations to deliver your chosen brand strategy.

Having led significant restructuring activities, I follow a three-step approach to try to turn a cost-saving crisis into a strategic advantage. These steps will transform the odds of success in turning strategy into successful execution.

‘If you’re not in one, you’re probably about to be’: Why are so many marketing teams restructuring?

Step 1. Take the opportunity to re-establish the role of marketing in your organisation, reiterating key goals with the executive.

When the CFO and CEO decide the only way forward is to reduce costs, grasp that decision and own it in marketing. In a Churchillian throw of the dice, never let a good crisis go to waste. Restructuring can be viewed as a negative, a once-in-three-year corporate convulsion that distracts and demoralises. But being a merchant of hope and optimism, I prefer to see it as a once-in-three-year opportunity to address fundamental issues. An opportunity to reset the position and understanding of marketing and brand building in the organisation by engaging the board on issues such as:

• How will we win future customers and de-risk future cash flows with products that are largely undifferentiated?
• How strong is our conversion among the brand aware from familiarity to consideration, to preference and trial vis-a-vis our competitors?
• To what degree can we only achieve our market share growth through reaching non-customers and infrequent buyers?

When starting this broad, I have often found pulling brand and sales activation apart helpful in these discussions. It breaks a lot of the norms to do so as you need both to grow effectively and efficiently, but if we want to ensure the benefits of brand building are understood, it is vital the organisation understands the different and complementary jobs brand and sales activation do.

The former being about the long term to win future customers from all category participants, focussed on increasing brand salience, building an enduring emotional connection, brand equity and some form of distinctiveness. In some respects all marketing activity focused on a six month-plus horizon. The latter being much more product-focused and short term. Focused on audiences who are in market now. It’s all about features, attributes, channels and pricing. Typically functional in approach, activity is direct and deliberately persuasive in tone: Find me easily and buy me now! Depending on the sales cycle this is the stuff of impact that tends to operate within a six-month sales window focusing on people who are ready to buy.

Being clear on the different roles of brand and sales activation with the executive team and board is a vital first step in cementing why brand building is critical to any ambitious organisation. You’ll quickly get a sense of the maturity of your executive team, and a solid consensus around the importance of growing a strong brand alongside smashing in-year sales targets.

Step 2. Set out a RACI to clarify decision rights

Once we have taken the first step and established that our business needs to invest in growing the brand to win long term, as well as investing in a performance marketing capability to win at point of purchase in the short term, the next step is to agree decision rights.

I remember once chatting to the CMO of a leading telco, and being told he couldn’t get anything up on the website, which was owned by digital. Or the CMO of a high street retailer who had no control over ecommerce advertising activity in his firm.

We’ve all been here: marketing-in-name-only. My guidance is to use restructuring as an opportunity to wrestle back some control and get much-needed clarity. This takes courage and tenacity, but it can be incredibly powerful. The first activity involves setting out what marketing should be accountable for across key activities in the marketing mix. In large organisations with strong functional product silos, we have the opportunity to push back, question and propose changes to who has responsibility for delivering these key activities – is it the marketing team, or does it sit elsewhere in the organisation? As well as who (named role) has to be consulted on key matters, or merely informed.

If the company is serious about reducing cost and inefficiency having one central brand or marketing team with clear decision rights will become obvious.

But getting to this can be bruising. It involves intense stakeholder engagement, tenacity, straight talking and some compromise. But at the end of the day responsibilities and decision rights will be clear between marketing and business unit leaders. Something I bet isn’t the case today for most marketers.

With some skill, we should be able to use the key principles of the restructure (i.e. being more efficient) to drive through changes in structure and decision rights that will help us deliver the role of marketing, as agreed by the executive in step one.

Step 3. Double down on roles not people. Redesign the function to achieve its agreed goals

The final piece of the jigsaw is building our function in line with the role we have set out, our accountabilities and decision rights. We need to put aside team relationships and divorce ourselves from the day-to-day to figure out what roles we need, and define the specific capabilities required to perform them in our functions.

The complicating factor in this is the inevitable cost pressure we will be under, as well as any central design principles taken regarding spans (i.e. how many direct reports people leaders should have), and how many layers the organisation wants – the idea being that flatter structures lead to greater individual accountability, faster decision-making, and greater efficiency.

Several times in my career, and by design, I have come out of restructuring with a dramatically different function. The major changes were less driven by cost pressure, more by focusing on the capabilities needed to execute a transformative brand strategy. All this with the aim of delivering a better future.

Building for tomorrow

Over the last quarter of a century marketers have achieved a great deal in some of the most testing environments. Whether that’s been the financial crash in 2008, the war on terror, globalisation and trade wars, the pandemic. Huge events have heralded booms and busts, and the accompanying restructures as businesses try to cope with the economic environment.

During this period of change, as an industry, we have managed to forge new brands with reach from São Paulo to Shanghai. We’ve created and powered ecommerce so anyone can buy anything from anywhere. We’ve enabled social networks that connect billions of people together, making the world a smaller and more accessible place. We have turned marketing into a recognised profession open to all talent.

Perhaps because of all these uncertainties, marketing science and training are making a difference, providing the skills and confidence marketers need to build for a better future for our industry and our brands.

We should have hope. Hope that this generation of marketing leaders will continue to build on past successes and discover the power of building strong brands into the future.

So, when you are next presented with the need to cut costs and restructure, don’t sit back and passively look at where to cut costs. Take a leaf out of Jackson Lamb’s book – be cynical and sardonic if you must – but like Lamb lean into the challenge, have the hard conversations about fundamentals, work tirelessly to protect your team and role in the organisation, and build an even better function for the future.