From under pressure to over-delivering: Insights from a marketing “Forum in the Round”

Marketers are under pressure in the same way people in most professional functions are: they must meet tight deadlines, manage sometimes unrealistic demands and expectations, and all too often counter misperceptions about the value of what they do.

That last point seems to magnify the pressure for marketers in particular. Unlike, say, sales or product teams, marketers have a harder job tying revenue to specific initiatives. It’s not that they lack data, but it’s easier to link new money to a sales push or innovative product line than to an improved net promoter score, or even potential leads generated further down the funnel. And, unlike operational teams, marketers can’t often point to dollars saved through more efficient processes.

This might lead cynics (those who slept through most of the marketing classes in their MBAs, at any rate) to recycle the tired adage that “I know half my marketing budget is wasted, but I don’t know which half.”

Ways to keep buoyant

Pressure like this seems unique to the function. But a succinct rejoinder to this gormless cliché is at hand - offered by one of the speakers at the recent Current Asia/EY “Marketing Under Pressure” forum (of which N/N was a proud co-sponsor):

“Just try taking away your brand spending and see what happens to sales.”

To be sure, marketers at the top of their game put themselves under enormous pressure, as they know their actions are crucial to business performance. This thread— the importance of executing the right strategy, especially as the external pressure on marketers builds— ran through discussions at the event, articulated first by the quickfire presentations of four expert speakers:

• Sam Lin, Chief Technology and Digital Officer of Prudential in Hong Kong, showed how collaboration with the tech team is increasingly vital in a world where pressure is building to make every engagement hyper-personalised. Understanding your clients and prospects with the necessary granularity requires close collaboration between marketing and tech functions, in particular to sift through the mountains of data now at everyone’s disposal.

• Grace Chan, who has had a stellar career leading the marketing strategies of some of the world’s biggest brands – including American Express and HSBC – explained the pressures of balancing global brand dictates with the needs of local markets. The key, Chan said, lies in part in putting into practice Henry Ford’s epigram that colleagues getting together marks the start of business, staying together means progress and working together means success. For marketers, this means connecting with and understanding the needs of local teams and empowering them as part of a long-term global collaboration, rather than treating them as discrete units or functionaries for individual campaigns.
  

• Kevin Huang, COO of SCMP, pithily articulated the pressures faced by a brand that, at 122 years old, needed to refresh perceptions of its value. Having become “like wallpaper” – acknowledged but rarely seen – he explained the answer was to take a step back and campaign with a new focus on the stories that define and unite the newspaper’s many readers and clients. This strategy left no doubt about the enormous respect, trust and perceived value the brand has spent decades building in Hong Kong, and across Asia.
  

• Last but not least Adam Najberg, a former journalist and marketing adviser to some of the biggest Chinese tech firms in the world including Tencent and DJI, described the pressure marketers often suffer in working with impatient product teams who think their invention will speak for itself. Even for a truly rushed product launch – sans branding budget, sans big names, sans strategy – marketers can marshal powerful narratives around product use cases, rather than the new technology, to create human interest. Also, it helps to relax a little bit and trust the visionaries and iconoclasts in your team sometimes, too…

All these and many more insights and strategies to deal with the pressures of the job were invaluable takeaways from the event. Our thanks are due to the speakers, the organisers – EY and our agency partner, Current Asia – and everyone who attended this interactive and engaging session and made it such a success. If you missed it, be sure to join the next one!