In my last post about the Asian Effies (that’s the Asian Marketing Effectiveness Awards, or AME) I remarked on how many agencies seemed to be struggling with the concept of ROI. A recent survey of CEOs by the Fournaise marketing group suggests that perhaps the agencies are not alone.
An astounding 73% of CEOs stated that marketers lack business credibility, and fail to be able to translate their language of brand equity into real numbers and real return on investment.
– 77% of CEOs say that their marketing teams fail to connect their actions to the business measures that matter (ROI, revenue, profit)
– 74% believe that their marketers focus too much on new trends (that’ll be social media!) but fail to explain how it will create new sales
– 72% say their marketers are always asking for more money, but rarely demonstrate what returns it will generate.
So I guess it’s hardly surprising that the agencies struggle, when their primary interface is with these marketers. What to do? As I suggested from the stage in Shanghai, perhaps agencies need to challenge their clients more and encourage them to define the returns that marketing activity delivers. Because if marketing teams cannot justify their actions to the CEO, it will be agency revenues that suffer.
And a question to those 73% of CEOs. What exactly are you doing about it?
