Why marketing may need to fight the C-level for control of the brand!

Communications and marketing people have a tough job that much is sure. No department in the organization is faced with such a rapidly changing means of reaching out to their target audiences, thus doing their jobs, as the Marketing and communications teams. Still there is one group that makes our job extremely difficult. It is the C-suite's slavish devotion to short term gains with a full knowledge of how the long term results will produce nothing but harm for the organization.

One key example of this is that the C-suite often expects marketing and communications to produce immediate results, while all the time reducing the budget we have to work with and shortening the amount of time to allow a campaign to work. Imagine if we told a doctor that a certain surgical procedure needs to take only 4 hours instead of 6, they can only use 75% of their tools and we expect the patient to be functioning at 120% inside of a week. People would laugh because these conditions are the height of irrationality, yet we think nothing of expecting marketing and communications to work under these conditions.

The most egregious weakness in this scenario is usually found in public companies. It is almost laughable how in many public companies the sole audience the C-level is interested in is the investment community and in keeping them happy. I have seen C-level executives prance around like they are in a dog and pony show and do self destructive things all for some short term benefit which, like a sugar rush, is often gone before it's enjoyed. Hardly any degree of attention is shown to the customer or retaining the customer. I have found it mystifying that a C-level executive will often dodge a customer call, yet will happily speak to some freshly minted MBA from Harvard or Princeton to keep the stock rating positive and thus up a penny or two.

An intelligent C-level executive sees the brand as the key to organization survival and thinks in the long term. The best analogy I have ever heard is that running a company is like climbing a mountain. You keep your eyes on the peak but also focus on the next ledge. That's a great analogy for what marketing can do to help a C-level executive succeed. Rather than being a cost center or a prop shop, marketing and communications can help the C-level executives reach the next level of success as well as that eventual peak. In fact, we're the only group who can get the program off the ground.

Marketing and communications can only succeed if they are viewed as a long term, strategic tool. Seeing them as a temporary, tactical tool to be cut and expanded on a willy, nilly basis is not only short-sighted but it is self-destructive. Visionary leaders in marketing and communications need to take the lead and need to confront the C-level on the responsibility to defend the brand and ensure its long-term success.