The Anatomy of Marketing
Kieran Antill
Exec. Director Brand @ Ne-Lo Business Design & Lead Coach @ The Anatomy of Marketing | eMBA
By Kieran Antill & Ross Hastings | September 14th 2023
Introduction
There is a tsunami of marketing advice out there, some well-evidenced, most well-intended, but all together it is a confusing mess. It’s not unusual (or surprising) for companies to be misaligned on the role of marketing within their organisation.
Marketing as a practice does itself no favours. It’s full of jargon, “next best things”, and heavy doses of bias. Rather than engage in productive debate that builds understanding, industry thought leaders tend towards endless public arguments over who’s right or wrong.
We’d like to see us be less concerned about who’s right and wrong and more about how it all connects. Even more importantly, how it all connects in the real world of business. No two businesses are the same, so who cares who’s right or wrong in theory? It’s far more valuable for executive teams to be able to articulate for themselves “How we do marketing around here” and be able to align a complex organisation around that.
Imagine an agreed systemic view of marketing, one that didn’t hold an opinion per se but represented all facets of marketing and how they interrelate. This isn’t about re-inventing the wheel and it’s certainly not about adding more models. It’s about bringing together the best of what we know and showing how it works as a system so that we can apply, test, learn, and optimise based on a common understanding of marketing. An Anatomy of Marketing, if you will.
Why do we need this marketing standard?
Whether it’s an industry debate or a discussion at an exec. meeting,? we lack common understanding and shared language of marketing. This causes major problems as we all say the same words but mean different things. Worse, we walk away thinking we mean the same thing.
Imagine a surgeon with no recognised accreditation approaching you in theatre, before debating with his colleague whether your heart is in your chest or your abdomen, and eventually asking for a scalpel and being handed a saw. That may be an embellishment, but it's a worryingly handy metaphor for the state of the marketing profession.
We need everyone that is involved with marketing to be speaking the same language and have a shared understanding of what it means. And we don’t just mean people in marketing departments. So….what do we mean? Perhaps a timely opportunity to take our own advice and clarify some nomenclature upfront.
What is a ‘Marketer’?
We thought we may need to create a paradigm shifting definition here. It turns out the traditional definitions are pretty sound, they’ve perhaps just been bastardised along the way. The Cambridge Dictionary states that “The marketer has to understand the reasons why people behave as they do”. Merriam-Webster goes with the -? perhaps not particularly earth shattering - “A marketer is someone whose job involves marketing.” but their subtext is more thought provoking; “As a marketer I understand what makes people buy things.”.
Nowhere does it stipulate that this person must exist in a marketing department, and as we’ll explore shortly, we suggest that these days many marketers don’t.
What is ‘Marketing’?
There is widespread consensus on "marketing mix” being the key here. The same can’t be said for what makes up that mix. Although we’ve had any number of Ps, Es, and Cs thrown at us over the years, Jerome McCarthy’s good ol’ 4Ps (Product, Place, Price, Promotion) from 1960 still hold up today. There is rarely (but not never) a need to complicate things beyond this.
The main difference is that in an age where most businesses are marketing organisations, these 4Ps are often spread across multiple departments or business units, making management of the marketing mix a tricky proposition.?
Which brings us on to.
What is a ‘Marketing Organisation’?
In a post-industrial economy, most businesses are marketing organisations. Unless you're from an industrial company, or primarily focused on manufacturing, mining, or oil & gas - the chances are you're in a marketing organisation. Whether or not it operates like one is another story.
Within a marketing organisation, the need for nurturing marketing as a holistic capability across the organisation is paramount because there are marketers making 4P decisions in many and perhaps all business units. Perhaps more importantly, the customer journey spans the business and almost everyone impacts it either directly or indirectly.?
Full accountability for marketing often sits with the CMO but they rarely have full sight of or impact on all marketing activity. In a world where brand = the reputation of your business, it’s clear that building a strong brand is an extremely complex undertaking. One thing is certain - marketing must be a culture, not a department.
So, while having an agreed marketing standard and common language is important in any business, it is absolutely critical in the complexity of a marketing organisation. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at The Anatomy of Marketing.
The Anatomy of Marketing
The Anatomy of Marketing (TAM) is a mental model showing the connected system of essential marketing components, underpinned by best-in-class models, frameworks, and theories for business leaders to use, debate, and improve. Much like the medical profession having an agreed view of the human anatomy, underpinned by debate within and between medical professions on how best to diagnose and treat different ailments in different parts of the anatomy.
As mentioned, this isn't about re-inventing the wheel, it's about bringing together best-in-class thinking and connecting it together so it focuses rather than frazzles. It's about creating a shared understanding so we can start debating how best to treat the anatomy, rather than argue over whether it has 2 legs or 4, and whether they connect to the hip or the shoulder joint.?
There are 5 key principles underpinning the anatomy
For any organisation to be effective, decision making must be connected and aligned. This is arguably even more critical in a marketing organisation, where more of these decisions, all across the business, have a direct impact on the customer experience and therefore the brand. More misalignment in decision making = more inconsistency in the customer experience = a weaker brand.
We regularly see different business units; usually marketing, product, and sales, investing in their own customer research and developing their own personas and value propositions. It can be incredibly effective to establish a common language and structure so that projects and decisions can be a) approached collaboratively and b) connect to and build on each other.? We use a simple coloured hat system, each with their own overarching goal, to help teams be clear on what altitude a project or decision sits at, and what it needs to connect to and inform.
Notice that Red, Orange and Yellow-hat projects are channel neutral – they inform Green and Blue-hat projects that prioritise tactics and execute within specific channels. This enables a collaborative approach to strategy decisions which inform clear and aligned prioritisation across multiple business units and channels, and avoids unnecessary duplication of investment and effort that ultimately fractures customer experience.
Marketing serves the business and therefore must connect to business objectives, know its role in achieving them, and identify how success (or lack thereof) will be measured. That is what marketing effectiveness is - the extent to which marketing supports business goals. These strategic decisions should connect throughout and across the organisation so outcomes are coherent and connected.
While objectives vary from business to business, one thing we can be sure of is that if the objectives aren’t clear then you can’t really measure marketing effectiveness.
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A key part of getting organisational alignment is to establish that Marketing is a mindset, not a department or an individual's role. This means there are people in most, maybe all departments, making decisions that affect how the business is marketed. The challenge is that the 4Ps of marketing (Price, Product/Service, Place, Promotion) are often spread across the business yet not everyone thinks of themselves as a marketer.
Job titles and departments can get in the way of the collaborative decision making required in this environment, so we use the DARE methodology as a title agnostic way of identifying decision making roles at all altitudes. It doesn’t matter what decision making framework you use, but we’ve found this one to be the most effective.
The most effective businesses build and optimise their marketing efforts over time, avoiding siloed initiatives and the duplication of work and investment that comes with them. To do this, everyone needs to be clear on what they’re building upon - again, no small task when these people are spread across business units.
Generative building of this nature has two mortal enemies - time, and departmental divides. To be successful, priorities need to be based on a company wide knowledge base and a clear understanding of what’s been before (and what else is currently happening). Has someone else already tried this? What did they learn? Have we already done customer segmentation? What are the product team working on just now? Decision makers need to be able to answer these questions (and more) quickly and accurately.
This is represented in the anatomy as a centralised wiki as technology continues to offer ways to collaborate in real-time but ultimately it’s about each business finding what works for their context and culture.
Don’t just stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to either (for all you TLC fans out there). As mentioned, the coloured hats are designed to promote connected strategy choices across and throughout holistic marketing capability. The potential misconception could be that we follow that in a linear fashion.
However, connected decisions go in both directions; as decisions are implemented, learnt from, and choices optimised, this information should feed upstream so preceding choices can be optimised too.?
The point is - this is not a project roadmap to move through from left to right. As we all know, business just doesn't run like that. Choices at all altitudes should be optimised based on what we learn, in as close to real time as possible - always keeping in mind the overall objectives of the organisation.
Why Now?
There are two prevailing trends in marketing just now.?
First, as we’ve covered already, is the rise of the marketing organisation and the complexity of having marketing roles across an entire organisation.
The second is the exponential growth of tech which now provides almost endless opportunities.? In 2023 Martech Map reported 11,038 Martech products on the market, allowing us to use AI to write a year's worth of content in a minute and send personalised emails to people halfway around the globe in a second. All very exciting…….and risky.
With these two prevailing trends at play, companies that already have misalignment across marketing activities and customer experience will see these inconsistencies exaggerated at an ever increasing rate and their brand diluted as a result.?
Ironically, in this world of endless opportunity, marketing fundamentals are key - with these established the possibilities are endless. That’s where The Anatomy of Marketing comes in.?
What Next?
As mentioned, our intention is for The Anatomy of Marketing to serve both as a mental model for the connected system of essential marketing components and also the organising principle for best-in-class models, frameworks, and theories for business leaders to use, debate, and improve.
Over the coming months, we will share content and host events to go deeper into the system and share the connected frameworks that underpin it. Of course, we hope that this proves valuable to anyone trying to improve the effectiveness of their marketing, but we also intend to spark healthy debate and actively encourage you to reach out to discuss, contest, or reinforce any of what we share.
Key Takeaways
In summary, the chances are you work in a marketing organisation (if you’re still reading this, it’s almost a certainty), and we’d be delighted if you took these 5 takeaways from reading this:
To find out more, share a challenge, or contribute to/discuss the anatomy get in touch via [email protected]
Authors
Kieran Antill
Kieran is one of Australia’s most awarded brand and marketing experts, having won multiple Grand Prix awards for Creativity and Strategic Effectiveness. He has been the Global Creative Director for Samsung Home Appliances and The Australian Open. Through global executive roles at Leo Burnett, JWT and R/GA, he has led large scale brand development projects for Canon, Google, Diageo, United Nations, WWF and end-to-end Marketing effectiveness projects for numerous National brands and successful scaleups / startups. He has an eMBA and 20 years of experience working across brand development and marketing effectiveness.
Ross Hastings
Ross is a renowned coach, consultant, and academic with a focus on combining behavioural economics, systems thinking, and strategy. Over the last two decades, he’s combined an academic career in the fields of positive psychology and coaching psychology with coaching and consulting for boards and executive teams in business, sport, and academia across four continents. He’s passionate about bridging the gap between theory and practice to develop successful strategies focused on value creation. He’s an Editorial Board Member for the International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring and Journal of Interprofessional Care; has published research on executive team coaching and gender diversity in leadership; and is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Publications and Thinking Referenced