Reckitt’s Remarkable Journey to Take Marketing to the Top of the Board Room Agenda
Tune in to Time for A Reset
On the latest episode of Time For a Reset: The Marketing Podcast with Global Leaders, host Paul Frampton – Global President at CvE Consultancy is joined by Jason Carter, Global Transformation Director at Reckitt, a renowned legacy CPG brand. The discussion pivots around the evolution of marketing in the CPG space, with Jason sharing insights across different critical topics, including his Reset the need for a return to a new iteration of full-service partners given there is such a splintered agency environment where media, messaging and digital channels are often very siloed, leaving the marketer the job of stitching things back together, the challenges of aligning vertical specialists with strategy formulators, how Reckitt is leading their marketing in-housing journey through strategically owning core parts of the media and marketing – namely audience planning, martech and data – collected in 8 regional hubs around the world driving best practices, and finally why marketing needs a seat at the board table to drive true business growth and transformation.
CPG Marketing – An Overview
In this digital age, it has become increasingly important for CPG agency partners to collaborate and integrate their efforts to reach and engage consumers effectively. True success depends immensely on the brand team leading its agency partners by making sure this integration occurs in a holistic way.
What skills do senior marketers need to develop to lead an integrated brand strategy and understand the role specialists play in it?
Complex functions in an organisation require specialists with in-depth subject matter expertise. Meanwhile, those more senior marketers responsible for formulating business strategies generally have a wider vision and scope, with only a surface-level understanding of more vertical functions. All organisations need to build a bridge between the two, and the teams or individuals tasked with leading the business strategy need a solid skill set to make sure vertical executions are embedded into the bigger picture.
“Teams that bring expertise and strategy on the same page require a special skill set. They need to extract what the specialist is saying, frame it in the right way so the strategist understands it and that knowledge then gets embedded into the strategy”
Why Marketing Needs to Sit at the Head of the Board Table to Drive Growth
The essence of marketing is developing and implementing strategies to engage with potential or existing customers and drive both brand and business growth. Hence, marketing needs to qualify the value it generates in a language the business understands. To get the seat at the head of the table, marketers need to switch from discussing value in terms like ‘enhanced loyalty’ or ‘greater engagement’ to quantifiable metrics like ‘ROI’ and ‘revenue growth’.
“When you’re talking to business people, talk in their language. Don’t talk about intangibles like loyalty and customer engagement; instead, marketers need to communicate their value in tangible metrics like ROI and sales growth”
The Impact of Technology and Data on the Marketing Landscape in Reckitt’s Marketing Operating Model
Thanks to a dynamic business environment and evolving customer preferences, a successful marketing strategy needs to be rooted in data and leveraging relevant technology. Instead of shoe-horning the same strategy for different markets, a marketer needs to be flexible in customising strategies to the requirements of different markets. Decisions need to be data-based, and IT needs to be aligned with marketing. Teams across business functions need to collaborate to achieve business outcomes.
“We have regular status meetings with a broad spectrum of individuals from different functions. They work together while focusing on larger business outcomes where they speak a similar language and measure the same metrics and business indicators”
More About Jason Carter
Jason has over 30 years of leadership experience that stretches from agencies, like Universal McCann and Zenith, to global brands, like Reckitt. He is an entrepreneurial and passionate media executive with a track record of launching and scaling digital capabilities across markets and building motivated and collaborative teams that deliver innovative digital marketing. Jason is also the founder of cartR Advisory, a platform that helps advertisers, agencies, publishers, tech players, and investors design, develop, and deploy growth strategies.
Join Us on Time For a Reset: The Marketing Podcast with Global Leaders
Tune in to the latest episode of Time For a Reset: The Marketing Podcast with Global Leaders, where we sit down with representatives of household brands to uncover the secrets behind driving transformation in today’s rapidly evolving world. From shifting consumer behaviour to the increasing importance of marketing in driving business growth, this podcast delves into the strategies and insights that are shaping the future of marketing.
You can read the full transcript episode here.
