Q&A: ANA's Mirque

CHICAGO While marketers are under increasing pressure to show accountability, many still feel frustrated in their efforts to communicate their goals and results within their corporate organizations, according to the Association of National Advertisers' fourth annual accountability study.According to the survey of more than 200 marketers, nearly a third of marketing departments handle their own accountability programs rather than having a cross-functional team working on these goals. As a result, nearly half of the respondents (up from a quarter in 2006) felt stymied by a lack of ROI definition and a similar number added there was poor organizational response to their ROI data, up from about a third in 2006.As the organization is set to present the results of the survey at its Marketing Accountability Forum this week in Palm Beach, Fla., Adweek senior reporter Aaron Baar spoke with ANA evp Barbara Bacci Mirque about the results. Q: What has changed over the four years of this study?A: What I found interesting this year is there's some backsliding in some of the responses. The good news is most companies have some sort of accountability effort. I think the bad news is that most of those efforts are not cross-functional. I'm disappointed to see that we still have 31 percent of the respondents saying that marketing accountability efforts are siloed within the marketing function. About only a third have cross-functional teams. I would like to have seen that number get a lot larger. I see a lot more frustration than I have in past years. To what do you attribute that?That only a third of the efforts are cross-functional is probably driving the frustration. What are the most surprising findings this year?[One is] the high frustration levels in 2007 over other years. I'm also surprised to see the marketing accountability practices are siloed within the marketing department, because then you don't get credibility. If finance isn't involved, you're probably not going to have credibility of the c-suite. How has the relationship between marketing and finance changed over the course of the survey?I think the findings are flat from '06 to '07. You have to have that cross-functional team. The good news is for the companies that do use cross-functional teams, they're probably going to be more successful. I think marketers are becoming more aware of the need to partner with finance in marketing accountability efforts. Now, that's sometimes easier said than done. It's a different way of thinking and a different culture, and it requires some different processes. The processes must be put in place. It may require some different skill sets. Why haven't the marketing departments gotten the finance departments involved?We don't ask that question. We've put it out there as a best practice. When you go on and look at the numbers, only 55 percent of our respondents are saying their marketing ROI goals are closely aligned with their overall corporate goals. Maybe that's because finance isn't involved. That's one of the more surprising findings. Not having corporate and marketing goals aligned seems to be counter-intuitive.I would agree. Again, we're extrapolating from the data. But if a third of the respondents' efforts are siloed within the marketing department, it's not surprising that marketing goals are not aligned with corporate goals. I think that has to do with some of the dissatisfaction—some of the CMO's goals are not aligned with the CEO's goals. Marketing is driving top-line growth within their organizations. What can marketers do to change that problem within their organization?They need to be more closely aligned with finance. They need to have cross-functional teams that know what they're going to measure. Some of these are easier said than done because you're talking about organizational changes. You need to have senior-level support and senior-level sponsors for these efforts. If you don't have a senior-level sponsor for your marketing accountability efforts, you may have them going off in different directions. Maybe the CEO and CMO have to have a discussion [along the lines of], "If this is important, here's what we need to do." Where do you see accountability going in the future?The state of measurement has advanced over the last couple of years [and that] probably at this point you can measure everything. That kind of changes things. I think this, too, shall progress and advance.

Brand Marketing

Q&A: ANA's Mirque

Aaron Baar

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Aaron Baar