Decision-Driven Marketing

Reprint: R1407D

The gap between marketers’ aspirations and what their organizations can accomplish creates intense pressure to reshape how marketing is done. In recent years some leading companies have developed an innovative approach that focuses on the seams between marketing and the other functions it interacts with—the C-suite, IT, sales, finance, and so on. It is at these seams that communication most often breaks down and processes stall.

Typically, three categories of marketing-related decisions cross organizational seams: strategy and planning; execution; and operations and infrastructure. When marketing works closely with other units to execute key decisions, it can get things done far more quickly and effectively than in the past. But divergent assumptions or a lack of alignment and shared commitment between functions can get in the way. When the authors asked people in marketing and other relevant units what roles they played in a decision, the answers were all over the map. In a classic example, both marketers and product developers in one automaker’s European division believed that they had the final say on which features to include in a new model.

The authors provide a tool for revamping the decision process at the boundaries between functions and describe how Target, Nordstrom, and other large companies have identified important decisions at the seams and increased the impact of their marketing organizations.