Fit for the future – what marketers need to survive and thrive in a data-driven era

Support from the top, the freedom to take decisions and training investment are key factors in determining whether marketers can effect real organisational change and become “future fit”, according to new research from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA).

The WFA surveyed senior marketers in 51 companies spending more than $80 billion on advertising globally to determine how well they are transforming marketing operations to meet the challenges and opportunities of the data-driven digital economy – a need that’s been accelerated by the pandemic.

The insights

• Leadership – Half of all organisations making the best transformation progress have active C-Suite support, and transformation is faster when an organisation’s leaders see marketing as a crucial growth driver, and have a clear plan for transformation.
• Training – A third of organisations say they invest significantly in the training and development needed for successful transformation. Those numbers fall to just 4% of organisations at an early stage of transformation and 6% of those that are “maturing”.
• Freedom – Half of organisations furthest along the transformation journey said they significantly or completely had this freedom, compared to 13% of early-stage companies.

Soundbite

“Fundamentally, successful marketing transformation is a people-based mission built around effective leaders who can take the whole organisation on a journey to deliver growth and sustainable competitive advantage” – Nick Broomfield, Director and Global Client Lead, Dentsu SCHEMA, WFA’s co-producers of Marketing Transformation: Delivering the Future Fit Organisation.

Sourced from World Federation of Advertisers