Roy Young and David Stewart are coauthors, with Allen Weiss, of Marketing Champions: Practical Strategies for Improving Marketing's Power, Influence, and Business Impact (Wiley, 2006). The three have collectively logged about 100 years' worth of experience in marketing. Roy is the Director of Strategy and Development at MarketingProfs and serves as a consultant and coach to marketing executives. Allen is the founding publisher of MarketingProfs and Professor of Marketing at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. David is the Robert E. Brooker Professor of Marketing at the Marshall School and the editor of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
Here, Roy and David answer 10 questions about their new book:
1. When did you first come up with the notion of "marketing champions"? And what in the world made you decide to write an entire book about them?
Roy: I was originally inspired to think more about marketing champions when I read Allen Weiss's short article on MarketingProfs.com, "Why Marketing Gets No Respect." I felt that the situation—the lack of respect for marketing professionals—needed more attention and a lengthier response to how marketers could address the problem. The field seemed to be crying out for a prescription for marketers to learn how to win respect and gain a seat at the strategy table.
I also became aware of a lot of myths about marketing that non-marketing managers circulate—such as "marketing is only about advertising" and "marketing is about tactics, not strategy."
I looked around for a book that dispels these myths, and couldn't find any. So the idea emerged for doing the book ourselves—not only to shatter those destructive myths but also to provide guidelines for marketers to better articulate the value they create for their companies.
2. Who would you elect as the ultimate marketing champion?
Dave: No single person comes to mind as the ultimate marketing champion. But you can certainly point to the usual suspects who would qualify as champions in most people's minds.
Many of them have become celebrities by virtue of their role in their company—they manage multimillion-dollar ad budgets and have enormous clout—rather than their actual accomplishments.
Roy: True marketing champions may be celebrities and occupy high-profile positions in their firms, but they also generate visible and measurable value for their companies. They might take unusual, creative approaches to introducing new products, clarifying marketing's impact on the company's bottom line, using the media in new ways to get the company's message out to an audience, or building bridges between marketing and other functions.
3. Why is marketing championship so important today?
Roy: Too many non-marketing executives think of marketers in limited terms. And when they don't recognize marketing's connection to company profitability and strategy, they miss out on the real value that marketers can provide. We wrote Marketing Champions to show marketers how they can combat these perceptions and "market marketing" inside their organizations.
Dave: The book is also timely because marketing has recently been demoted (in many executives' eyes) to a subordinate position. It's treated as an expense and a tactical tool, and executives don't see it as contributing to their company's bottom line.
This didn't used to be the case: In earlier decades, when the U.S. economy was growing fast, marketers were seen as the ones who really drove business. They had a lot more stature then, and we think it's time they regained that stature.
4. So are marketing champions are a rare breed. And when you do find them, where do they tend to hang out? In what sectors, I mean.
Dave: They are definitely few and far between—again, because of recent widespread discounting of marketers' value. But those who are out there are operating in lots of different industries, including consumer packaged goods, high-tech, and banking.
Roy: It's especially hard to be a marketing champion—and be recognized for it—in big companies. The larger a company, the slower it moves and the more inwardly focused it becomes because of the complexity of managing a huge entity. In these companies, executives have the most trouble recognizing marketing's importance.
5. You offer a lot of practical advice in your book about how marketers can boost their power, influence, and business impact. If someone (oh, say, a desperate reader) grabbed you by the lapels and demanded that you identify the single most important suggestion, what would it be?
Dave: I'd advise them to understand and demonstrate their role in contributing to their company's financial performance, in both the short term and the long term, including identifying and taking advantage of growth opportunities. And I'd suggest focusing on your leverage points to change perceptions of your value to the company—understanding that you can't transform an entire organization's culture.