R3 Report Explores How Automotive Leaders Design the Success of Internal Marketing Teams

Independent global marketing consultancy R3 has released a report that explores how leading automotive brands like Nissan, Porsche, and CarMax have updated their internal marketing operations to ensure the return on investment of digital transformation.

“Every marketer is aware that the post-pandemic landscape is one of digital acceleration. Change in the consumer journey has led to an increased need for specialization, and this means agency models and partnership frameworks need to be revisited,” says Greg Paull, Co-founder and Principal at R3. “However, sustaining that transformation requires change on the inside, which means building future-fit marketing teams.”

Data-driven agile organizations

R3’s Modern Automotive Marketing Operations report looks at the characteristics of data-driven organizations and highlights derailers, like lack of front-end access to data and poor data governance, that might divert marketing teams from reaching integration goals. It also outlines how the application of the right business model thinking can help teams remain communicative, innovative, and agile.

“We need to look at optimizing processes while allowing specialization in areas like data analytics and e-commerce. This requires thinking around operational structure and how assets interact and inform each other to drive value,” says Paull.

Preventing ‘innovation theater’

Automotive brands have largely invested in digital innovation units (DIU) as they look to transform their OEM and retail experiences. Surprisingly, studies have found that most digital innovation initiatives do not contribute to commercial growth.

To ensure that digital innovation units go beyond ‘innovation theater,’ stakeholders need to distinguish between core and beyond-core innovation, assign tasks to the right teams, select the right DIU model, and align it with the brand’s purpose and digital strategy and ambitions.

A copy of R3’s Modern Automotive Marketing Operations can be requested here.