A McKinsey report last year said said eight in 10 CEOs believe CMOs can be a “major driver of growth” in their business but David Scribner’s experiences is marketers are challenged to deliver on the remit without broader “influence” across customer experience, digital business maturity, data governance and the alignment of marketing with the broader business agenda. 

After three years as Global CX Director at SAP – and a short stint as Chief Customer Officer at oOh Media – Scribner has set up a marketing and growth advisory firm f(v) Advisory with another former Telstra and Orange UK marketer, Lydia Feely. Feely has been with Trinity P3 for 15 years. It has also struck an agreement with US “family wealth organisations” to provide capital investment along with f(v) Advisory’s services, primarily for start-ups. But the early focus is helping mid-tier and enterprise marketers broaden their influence in organisations with a structured approach to digital maturity audits and benchmarks, for example, along with action plans to improve processes and results.  

"If eight out of 10 CEOs are saying marketing's in charge of growth, and the only cannon that they've got is brand and communications, then they probably won't get that sustainable win for growth,” Scribner told Mi3. 

“They're coming in usually with a distinct brand and communications focus, rather than a broader channel, pricing, product focus. The key question is if I'm in charge of growth, what do I need to do to make sure that I've got a cross organisation influence?"

(It's pretty much a clean version of what Mark Ritson has been saying for years, and now warns it's coming to a crisis point.)

Scribner and Feely said this cross-functional influence is crucial for addressing complex challenges that span multiple business functions without marketers having control of those different functions: improving customer experience, for instance, often requires collaboration between marketing, IT, operations, and customer service teams. But the delegation of CX to other departments represents a significant “missed opportunity” for marketing, per Feely.

"There's a tendency for customer to rest in the service area so the people that are in charge of the chats now, the call centres – they think they are the customer lead, when it is the whole organisation."

Perhaps that's because customer needed a custodian – and marketing had not always stepped up and travelled across different business functions.

This siloed approach often stems from organisational structures that have evolved organically over time, suggested Scribner. "Most structures grow because something's new. AI is new. I need somebody to look after AI. Once upon a time social media was new, I need a social media manager. Digital is new. I need a digital team."

The result has been a fragmented approach to CX that failed to leverage marketing's insights into customer behaviour and preference. Bridging this gap requires CMOs to assert their influence and demonstrate the value of a more integrated approach. Hence the consultancy's name – the VF stands for full value.

Don't own, influence

Scribner and Feely argued that marketing does not need to control different functions but marketers needed to understand them.

“The ownership of functions doesn’t necessarily have to change, but in the influence of marketing on those functions, it has to change," Feely suggested. 

Scribner said the CX remit was a classic example of these functions operating in silos, which has led to “disjointed customer journeys and missed opportunities”.

"You could see that there was a really big demarcation between the customer experience and personalisation and database people coming out the direct marketing field and your brand and communications marketers," Scribner said. "There's a really big distinctive line which, by the way, still exists.”

This disconnect has had real-world consequences, Feely said. "Go to some key websites that you've just used personally, and the amount of frustrations you have, you can see it. You don't even have to go looking."

Another challenge facing CMOs is the need to drive digital maturity across their organisations. As businesses increasingly rely on digital channels for customer interactions and data collection, marketing's role in shaping the digital strategy is paramount – from ecom to brand and CX.

The P&L Imperative

Both Scribner and Feely were at Telstra in the early 2000s when it put P&L responsibility back onto marketing teams under a customer segmentation strategy for the entire business, implemented by then CEO David Thodey.  

“Marketing teams were not just responsible for brand and communications but for the overall performance and profitability of their assigned customer segments,” Feely said. "You got your customer base and just divided it up – where's that growth going to come from? So, yes, customer acquisition, but it was also about the customer data – you just lived and breathed by it."

Scribner said the significance of understanding P&Ls for marketing remains critical, but underserved. "That was what made you tick, understanding the P&L and I think there is a gap,” he said. “There’s a big gap, so when people need to be that influence across an organisation, they need to speak finance to finance people – can they speak results?"

It's the combination of these “composite” capabilities that marketers typically have at some level that need co-ordination, structure and process to deliver on growth that Scribner and Feely are focused on, particularly at a mid-market to enterprise level to enterprise. 

They are now touting a range of audits and action plans designed to produce “quick wins” for marketing teams and marketers increasingly in the “fight for their life.”