n 2004, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. and the Association of National Advertisers conducted a survey of 370 corporate marketers from 100 companies in nine industries. The findings revealed a significant disconnect between CEOs’ agendas and marketing teams’ activities. While 46 percent of marketers in the Booz Allen study named driving growth as a priority, that’s nowhere near the 87 percent of CEOs who indicated in a 2004 Conference Board survey that “sustained and steady top-line growth” was their top priority. And, perhaps more alarmingly, only 37 percent of the marketing respondents said “driving the CEO agenda” was an essential objective of the marketing team. (A comprehensive discussion about these findings appeared in the March 2005 issue of Corporate EVENT magazine.)

So it was no surprise to learn that many of the chief marketing officers Booz Allen interviewed felt they were losing influence in their companies, and in particular with their CEOs.

Imagine our astonishment, then, when this same research showed that a majority of senior executives, both inside and outside of marketing departments, believed that marketing’s importance had actually significantly increased. Talk about a disconnect.

This question — “What is driving marketers’ perception that their teams are underperforming?” — prompted the next phase of Booz Allen’s research. In 2005, we launched an 18-question Marketing Profiler study (still available at www.marketingprofiler.com).

We found that marketing teams break down into six categories or operating styles, each with its own view of its role and responsibilities within the company. Only one of these styles correlated with high-performing companies (defined as those that are 20 percent more likely than their industry peers to exhibit superior revenue growth and profitability): the Growth Champions.

Six Types of Marketing Teams

1. Growth Champions (9.8 percent). The least-prevalent marketing team is the one that is the most connected with its company’s strategic agenda — and the most directly correlated with above-average company growth and profitability. Growth Champions seek commonalities across markets in which their companies have a presence, both to find efficiencies and to clearly identify where customized communications or marketing operations are required. They look beyond customer satisfaction to how customers use their products and what problems they are trying to solve, then collaborate with sales and product-development teams to develop and deploy products that solve these problems. Most important, they excel at collaborating across R&D, finance, sales, and other departments to more quickly bring products to market. And they have standardized methodologies and metrics that allow them to calculate return on investment (ROI), and to demonstrate their accountability for the entire organization’s results.

2. Marketing Masters (38.7 percent). The most-prevalent team profile, Marketing Masters excel at traditional marketing fundamentals. Marketing Master leaders are expert coordinators, communicators, and cheerleaders, typically overseeing the customer-focused side of new product and service launches. They coordinate with major functions such as sales and product development, and manage branding objectives. But their success as executional leaders means they are rarely seen as — nor do they consider themselves to be — strategists with decision-making authority about larger corporate objectives. As expert tacticians, Marketing Masters are second only to Growth Champions in their contribution to company revenue growth and profitability through effective and efficient program development.

3. Senior Counselors (18.9 percent). Senior Counselors advise the CEO and executive team on marketing strategy, earning respect and presence with the senior-management team. They may also lead major advertising, promotion, and PR campaigns. Yet these creative and experienced teams rarely lead revenue-generating activities such as product innovation or new-business development, and do not have decision-making involvement about market expansions or extensions.

4. Best-Practices Advisors (8 percent). These marketers work with individual business units to maximize marketing effectiveness and efficiency by applying proven practices to their marketing and communications activities. Best Practices marketing departments’ reliance on proven and efficient techniques correlates with average company profitability and growth.

5. Brand Builders (11.1 percent). These organizations are models of brand-centered marketing communications. They efficiently and effectively provide marketing services such as customer-communications development, creative direction and output, and campaign execution in support of company brands. But Brand Builders’ leadership roles and decision involvement on company strategy and investment issues barely register.

6. Service Providers (12.7 percent). In a Service Provider organization, the role of marketing is strictly executional. These tacticians develop and launch advertising, promotion, and PR programs at the direction of the company’s brand and product teams, but do not contribute to larger discussions about brand or product viability. Companies with Service Provider marketing functions have the most lackluster revenue growth and profitability measures: More than 25 percent report revenue growth below their industry average.

The Hallmarks of a Growth Champion

Growth Champions see themselves as owners of their company’s key growth-support functions, whether or not these fit into conventional definitions of marketing practice. For example, the CMO of a Growth Champion marketing department frequently heads up general-management activities, such as product innovation and new-business development, and often has decision-making authority over large investment decisions to enter new markets or to launch new products. And 75 percent of Growth Champions say they “always work hand in hand with the CEO to establish the company’s strategic agenda.”

Growth Champion teams are united by five key attributes, regardless of their company’s industry:

1. They can report metrics that matter. Growth Champions can identify their contributions to revenue growth, and can clearly define ROI for their efforts.

2. They have diverse experience. Many Growth Champions have spent time in operational or finance departments, and have a broader range of capabilities than their counterparts in other companies.

3. They build operational efficiencies into their programs. Growth Champions use standardized tools and processes for idea, program, and metrics development and tracking.

4. They see cross-functional applications for their insight. Growth Champions proactively provide guidance, services, and recommendations that they believe add value to the senior leadership team.

5. Their contributions resonate up high. Growth Champions are perceived by C-level executives as leaders of the company-wide growth agenda.

Evolve Your Team

Event marketing, with its naturally cross-functional objectives and complex outcomes, is a ripe environment for ambitious and focused marketing teams to operate like Growth Champions. In other words, to focus on the end game: driving revenue. Here’s how.

1. Standardize. Find opportunities to build consistency and standardization in all aspects of your program. Instead of viewing events as individual and unique “products” tailored to specific market or customer segments, find commonalities and efficiencies across all of your markets and events. Such standardization provides support for critical and consistent metrics and measurement activities. If, for example, a particular approach to a conference session leads to a measurable increase in adoption of one of your company’s services, and you build that same session approach into events for multiple audience segments with the same result, you’re left with a solid metric in support of your event program’s effectiveness, and a clear top-line growth success.

2. Measure. The greatest challenge marketers face today is to measure marketing performance with the same rigor as other business and operational functions. Establish a consistent set of growth-focused measurements that you can track year over year and from event to event. For example, how many leads or sales result from an event? What percentage of attendees come from your company’s top 20 percent of customers? What are your targets and objectives for the middle 50 percent of your customers? How do their engagements with your firm grow as you relate to them in event settings? Are your channel-partner events paying off in terms of increased sell-through? Know your goals, know your investment, and know how to connect the dots for senior management — particularly finance and sales executives. Standardized reporting and metrics lead to departmental accountability, which leads to management respect.

3. Cultivate C-level awareness. Discover ways to broadcast the success of your events, as proven by your robust metrics, to senior leaders in the company. The more positive the metrics are and the more revenue tied to the events, the greater budget you can command for future events.

4. Collaborate cross-functionally. Events are obvious opportunities to develop shared growth objectives with other departments, and then to build programs that will address those shared objectives. For example, few opportunities other than corporate events allow you to — in one place — collect customer testimonials about how your products and services solve problems, which can drive sales and business-development efforts; learn about problems that vex customers, then bring that information to R&D or new-product development to drive line extension; and gather feedback about work in progress to validate concepts and avoid costly misfires in product development. (See Corporate EVENT, Fall 2006, to learn about Northrop Grumman Corp.’s particularly successful efforts in this regard.)

Brand- and relationship-building are important. A flawlessly executed event is essential. But what really matters to executives is what that brand-building and flawless execution should deliver: more sales. Frame your event program in these terms, and you’ll achieve recognition and respect from executives as a contributor to the company-wide growth agenda e