Brands discuss regularly their internal challenges, often with their finance team, and it regularly comes up in our Media Leaders Steering Group. Earlier in the year we discussed that there is a lot of material produced for Marketers e.g., ‘how to talk the language of the CMO’ but not a lot of communication directly to Finance. We also concluded that it can be much more effective with someone else communicating a message.
With thanks to Rachel Moss, we started the conversation with Camelot’s Co-Chief Executive, Clare Swindell who shared what they as a marketing/media community need to do to engage their boardroom stakeholders in marketing investment. How can finance be persuaded to take a risk? How do you tell a story without ROI? How to have smart conversations?
How can Marketeers and Finance work more effectively together? For the second part of the meeting, we were joined by PwC's, Sam Tomlinson.
How do marketeers effectively build the case for Marketing investment? What do finance look for to make sure rigour is embedded in the process . Do finance see marketing as an investment; a growth lever; a cost; or as a tap that can be turned on or off?
There are multiple areas at the intersection of Marketing and Finance commonly raised by brands. Key highlights:
- Understand where you are with Brand vs Performance. Many believe in the 60:40 Binet and Field optimal model but often this gets shifted. Best way to support brand investment through robust marketing effectiveness (lots of bad ways – multi touch attribution, last click ) The more sophisticated the econometrics the more that will encourage brand spend.
- Media inflation will tail off in 2023. There is a lot of value to be had. TV ad spend is down 7/8%, TV audience’s down c. 3% so TV costs are down c. 6% hence now good time to send on brand marketing.
- Marketing Procurement will typically run a pitch and commit to a lower price , the agency then negotiates with the Broadcaster – a self-defeating process which thankfully we may be seeing the end of.
- A useful reminder … If a digital CPM is too good to be true – it is!
