What kind of marketing does your organisation really think it needs and how do you get it?

What kind of marketing do you need? What kind of marketing do you do? It’s been our experience working with both small and large businesses, that often a company might want to undertake a marketing program but is not really prepared for it...as a result some works gets done but it is never effectively implemented and no one feels the program was very successful. Why?

It’s an interesting question and one that US business consultants Booz Allen Hamilton and the US Association of National Advertisers recently worked on together. What they did was to define types of marketing 'organisations' that already exist within most businesses today. Their report identified six distinct types of marketing within organisations. According to the study, all have unique strengths and each is appropriate to particular types of companies in certain competitive circumstancesvalued within the company for its ability to drive revenue. It is considered as important as other major departments, such as finance and sales. It drives the company’s priorities and leads product innovation and new business development.


1. Growth Champion. The marketer is highly valued within the company for its ability to drive revenue. It is considered as important as other major departments, such as finance and sales. It drives the company’s priorities and leads product innovation and new business development.


2. Senior Counselor. Functioning as a high-level advisor on marketing strategy to the chief executive officer and the individual businesses, the marketer is the Senior Counselor, leads major advertising, promotion, and public relations campaigns. Unlike the Growth Champion, however, it does not typically drive company-wide strategy.

3. Brand Foreman. The marketer is an efficient provider of marketing services, ranging from communications strategy to creative output and campaign execution, in support of the company’s key brands. It serves as the central manager of agency relationships, and is considered among the company’s most important support organizations.

4. Growth Facilitator. The marketer has the authority and skills to develop and lead large, company-wide marketing efforts and helps set the business’s overall priorities. They coordinate with other major functions, such as sales and product development.

5. Best Practices Advisor. The marketer works with the individual businesses to identify internal and external best practices and incorporate them into all marketing activities. This organization’s goal is helping the businesses achieve maximum effectiveness and efficiency, and it has expertise across all elements of the marketing toolkit.

6. Service Provider. The marketer supplies marketing services such as advertising, promotion, and public relations at the request of the company’s brand and product teams. The Service Provider is effective at executing specific tasks and is responsive to time-sensitive requests.

According to the study, many companies with internal marketing functions claim to fulfill most or all of these, but in reality they tend to gravitate to only one of these roles. DIFFUSION believes that knowing which type of marketing function exists within your company is critical. The challenge is to understand where the company is heading and make sure marketing is developed and configured properly.

More importantly, we believe that it is the absence of brand and marketing capability, in any form, in many organisations which is far more critical and one that the Booz Allen/ANA study does not consider. Where this type of function and the culture associated with it is missing or where it is relegated to a partial consideration and/or a part-time role, this seems a fundamentally more important place to start.

So we’ve added one new type of marketing for organisations.

7. Consultant Provider. In the absence of a real marketing organisation, an agency or consultants supplies brand and marketing services such as strategy, advertising, promotion, and public relations at the request of the company’s management. The Consultant Provider must be effective at executing specific tasks, is responsive to time-sensitive requests and often provides this on an on-going basis.