Good marketers are good debaters first

Often we work with marketing departments, internal audit teams, those in charge of leading innovation efforts within organisations - who are all challenged by the same phenomena...shrinking budgets.

In a blind drive to optimise, save costs in 'these difficult times' etc etc. - less and less money is being assigned, by accountants, to important functions like marketing and innovation.

Labelled as 'nice to haves', so-called discretionary expenses like marketing and innovation are first on the chopping block every budget season and actions that cannot be attributed to clear measurement are almost universally questioned and banned.

This situation is obviously frustrating because logically it is well-known that consistent brand building and maintaining a full-and-compelling pipeline of market-creating innovations are the best tools with which to do any company's most vital task; acquire and keep customers.

The problem is though that marketing, internal audit and innovation teams often are not armed with compelling enough arguments as to why it is imperative to continue to increase a company's investment into these functions.

The case for further investment is weak.

Being a great marketer means also being a great debater.

If you can convincingly present a plausible case for why investing in brand building is the strategic play that the company desperately needs, then the counter argument looks less appealing as a result (even to the person who is making it).

In our experience most marketers are still operating under the assumption that increasing budgets are obvious and as a result feel somewhat blindsided by conservative senior management's reluctance to spend more money.

You can't sell the value of creativity to analysts without first completely justifying the business case for creativity.

With strong evidence and a properly constructed rational argument it is possible to invalidate the false narrative that often gets offered as gospel-truth by people who just look at numbers all day.

But you have to accept the responsibility of acting as an advocate for these functions first.

There are a lot of assumptions and woefully inadequate conclusions that continue to exist unchallenged within businesses.

Forcing leadership to prove how an approach that includes a disinvestment in marketing and innovation is going to secure the future of the business is an important first-step to creating the conditions for a renewed path of customer-centricity.