Making it to the top

Some of the world’s largest brands, including Coca-Cola and McDonald’s have recently given marketers senior roles in the boardroom. The fast food giant’s UK arm, as well as ING Direct, Match.com and Quorn all have former marketers as their chief executive, while Reckitt Benckiser’s incoming global CEO Rakesh Kapoor has run marketing for the company in various parts of the world. Coca-Cola, meanwhile, has recently promoted former chief marketing officer Beatriz Perez to vice-president.

However, these appointments appear to contradict the results of a survey released in June that revealed almost three-quarters of chief executives think marketers don’t have business credibility because they fail to measure the success of their campaigns.

Even those that have reached the top warn that very few marketers have the skills to become a chief executive. As Merlin Entertainments chief executive Nick Varney – once a marketing director himself – puts it: “There are very few marketers below the senior level who get to see the whole picture. And even at a senior level, few marketers carry the responsibility for profit and loss.”

So, how can marketers become CEOs? Marketing Week asks chief executives and managing directors who began their careers in the marketing department for a five-point plan to help others climb to the top of the corporate ladder.

Understand the enemy - and make them your friend

Marketers need to understand how people inside and outside the business view their department. This allows them to be seen as the authority on the customer, rather than someone solely associated with creating advertising.

Kevin Brennan, chief executive of Quorn and former marketing director at Kellogg’s UK, says: “Getting a finance director or sales director’s perspective of where marketing fits into the organisation is important. It builds empathy and a broader understanding of where marketing fits into a business and how the heads of other functions would see it.”

It is also vital to gain a broader understanding of the role of other directors and heads of departments within your business. Asking regular questions about what else is happening in the organisation will help marketers plug any gaps in their knowledge about the general business environment.

Peter Shaw, chief executive of DP Poland – which runs Domino’s Pizza in the country – was once international marketing director at Poland’s largest coffee chain, Coffeeheaven, and is head of his own consultancy, Brand Catalyst. He says marketers need to ask the most basic questions of other business functions to gain better understanding and offer external insight.

“You should be very honest and say ’this is not my core discipline’ before asking basic, maybe quite naïve questions,” he says.

“If you know a function very well and you have been educated along a particular path, you get into a habit. You might use certain language and acronyms. If you are not coming from that background, you can challenge others and it will give you a clarity of insight about the way a business is working,” Shaw adds.

Richard Doe, chief executive of ING Direct UK, who was promoted from marketing director at the firm last December, says cross-department questioning should be a formal discipline for any organisation, but warns that marketers need to go beyond very basic questions.

“If you are in a board meeting, everyone can ask one question of their other directors,” he says. “The key test is whether you can ask a second question. As a marketing director, you need to be a bit of a banker as well – understanding how the bank makes money, risk management and the finance side is absolutely critical.”

Clear Channel chief executive Matthew Dearden, a former BT marketer, also warns: “Marketers can suffer from being seen to only consider interim metrics. Awareness and brand preference are important, but where marketers risk letting themselves down is forgetting the ’so what’ for the business. There is a danger of looking as though you are focused on the internal metric, rather than the external, which is going to help the company sell more.”

Delving into new areas can mean marketers must force themselves to do things they are not naturally inclined to do, according to Ian Filby, chief executive of DFS and former trading director at Alliance Boots, who marketed the No 7 and 17 brands. “My advice is to get out of your comfort zone and push people above you. Tell them that you are hungry to get on and make sure you don’t just keep doing what your specialism is.

“I got all my learning and experience from being forced to do roles that I didn’t think were the natural next step,” he says (see View From the Top, below).

Learn from spies – remember to be nosy

Marketers hoping to become chief executives need to ensure they don’t simply become knowledgeable about their own area. They need to be extremely inquisitive about what else is going on elsewhere in the organisation and then use this to their own advantage.

Karl Gregory, managing director and former marketing director of Match.com, says: “In larger organisations, if marketers become an expert in one area, it can be very difficult for them to move. Being naturally curious about every part of the business is a mindset that assists people very well. It’s not so much a skill-set as a mindset to be curious about why and how our Match.com product works, in particular how people convert from membership into a paying customer. I was always interested in the financials and in our share price.”

Gregory says adopting this way of working makes it easier to move into a role that requires a more holistic view of the business. He always reads detailed financial reports on the business but admits: “I suspect most people don’t.”

Dearden at Clear Channel says the advantage of a marketing role is that it tends to allow regular access to other departments. “Because marketing is so broad, executives often have access to more information about the business than other functions. Marketers must take advantage of this opportunity,” he adds.

ING Direct’s Doe says he has always looked beyond his current role or industry for inspiration. “I’ve always leaned towards a bigger picture role. You have to encompass everything beyond what your specific role is about. If a marketing director only focuses on that role and doesn’t get under the skin of the rest of the business, particularly in how it makes money, then that is going to be a bit of a barrier,” he says.

Doe adds that being a member of networking group Wavelength, which organises events in a variety of sectors to help leaders see how other businesses work, aids him in broadening his own horizons.

Learn how to make difficult decisions early on

It might seem strange to look for areas of trouble or confusion within businesses, but if marketers want the top job they need to make the most difficult of corporate decisions. Clear Channel’s Dearden says that once someone becomes a chief executive, they are expected to know all the answers.

“You do find yourself with a tough decision to make and it comes to the point where you would have wanted to look at your MD or CEO and everyone is looking at you,” he warns.

Dearden adds: “I don’t wish to sound arrogant, but it struck a chord when Barack Obama said that everything he deals with is extremely difficult and that, by definition, if it was easy, someone would have solved it before it got to his desk.”

Marketers who think about the decisions their CEO will need to make further up the command chain can make themselves seem a logical successor when the time comes.

ING Direct’s Doe says: “No-one wants to spend their time resolving problems. Solving them quickly is what makes the difference.”

Surround yourself with people who know more than you

The path to the top job cannot be walked alone. Marketers need to ensure that they recruit staff who can assist in improving the reputation and capability of their department.

“Growing your own staff is a very powerful way of running a business – that is a mantra I’ve lived by,” says Gregory at Match.com. “David Ogilvy once said: ’Hire people who are bigger than you and you’ll become a complete giant.’

“From a young age, I was hiring people older or more experienced than me, and possibly better in some areas. I have never shied away from that.”

If a marketing director only focuses on that role and doesn’t get under the skin of the rest of the business, particularly in how it makes money, then that is going to be a bit of a barrier

But Gregory adds that not everyone he encounters in business can see this is a good style of management. “I must admit that whenever I talk to people about that, I get blank faces or people saying it is an odd way of pushing myself. But it is the one that works for me,” he claims.

DP Poland’s Shaw agrees that no executive should be nervous of seeming to know less than their colleagues. He argues that it is more important to know how to leverage everybody’s skills to find the best solution for the company.

“A chief executive of a large publicly listed company once told me that when he is in a meeting, most of the other people there will often know more about a subject than he does. So my role is to make judgements and decisions and help the business function,” says Shaw.

Working on the principle that 80% of a business is fairly simple and the remaining 20% fairly complicated, Shaw warns against trying to handle everything yourself. Learning good delegation skills and recognising where people can assist with their superior skills is all part of learning to manage effectively from the top.

“You don’t have to be an expert in everything. You need to find lots of great experts and people you trust. Sometimes it won’t work but the thing is not to take the whole thing on your shoulders. But it is easy to do – I do it and get stressed. There is good reason why it is called a company – because there is more than one person,” he says.

Don’t make becoming CEO your only goal

Not every marketer knows at the beginning of their career that they will one day hope to become a CEO. Many find that once they have managed the brand of a business through marketing it, they then want to progress to general management.

“I didn’t say ’I will be CEO’,” says ING Direct’s Doe. “But a lot of the time I’ve felt like I’m moving forward. And every time you get a new role, you think ’OK this is it, this is where I plateau out’ and then typically after a few years you think ’I might have a bit more potential’.”

For DP Poland’s Shaw, running a business wasn’t his intention, either. He recalls: “I came through a classic marketing services route – market research, new product development, innovation. I was interested in new ideas and developing businesses in a fairly entrepreneurial way but I never had a great desire to be a great leader. But then circumstances arise where you are encouraged by someone.”

While Clear Channel’s Dearden says he was always keen to run a company, he too thinks it is important to remember that he found success in lots of areas before taking the top job in his organisation. “It’s not the only thing I’ve wanted to do. I’ve had roles involving commercial, operations and marketing. I’ve enjoyed them all and would happily do the right functional role again.”

It appears that the process of becoming a CEO should be about gaining the skills that are necessary to run a business, rather than setting your heart on a particular job title. Quorn’s Brennan says: “Along the way I was making sure there were opportunities to build general management capabilities. When I was in Australia I was also the general manager for New Zealand. It is a small market but it gave me some experience in that field. Towards the end of my time at Kellogg, I was general manager for snacks, so I was constantly making sure that I was broadening my skills.”

The debate about which group of executives should own the natural succession path to the CEO’s position is unlikely to cease any time soon, but those marketers who follow the advice laid out by the leaders who were once their peers may one day find that they move up to take top place themselves.