B2B CEOs Miss the Big Picture on Marketing (a Lesson from Nike’s Decay)

Imagine you’re the CEO of an adtech company whose growth is stalling. Could be at $5M in revenue, $50M, or $100M. Maybe you (or someone else) built the business in the golden days of adtech, and growth has since atrophied. Maybe you conquered a category like native that is now lukewarm at best. Maybe you’re just in a relatively small market with super high switching costs, which puts a ceiling on growth. In any case, you’re not growing as fast as you’d like. 

No one is talking about you. Yes, you have a coterie of loyal customers who love your customer success team. After all, you’re a $5M, $50M, or $100M company. You have to be doing something right! If you’re in adtech, your technology is probably more or less a commodity that is difficult to distinguish from that of your competitors. Sure, there’s a special thing or two about it that you understand — and that maybe your most loyal customers understand — but the market, including your potential future customers, doesn’t know about it. In fact, they don’t think about you at all because, again, you’re not part of the industry conversation.

So, you get curious about marketing, which you’re either not investing in, or maybe you are investing in it, but the impact is unclear. You see the Ari Paparos and Brian O’Kelleys and Matt Barashes of the world. People seem to be paying attention to them. What is the magic they do that makes that happen? Could it have an impact on your business? Could marketing be the change you need to start growing again?

At this point, you, the CEO, are likely to have one of two reactions based on the current state of your marketing.

If your organization is currently investing little to nothing in marketing, there are cultural reasons for that. You likely have questions such as the following: How will I know marketing is worth it? How are we going to measure it? What if I just hire more salespeople instead? How are you (marketer) going to prove it’s working? Can you show me deterministic examples of how it’s worked in the past? How do I know marketing made it work and not other aspects of the organization? How long do I need to do this marketing thing? 

If you’re the CEO of an organization that has an established marketing team, you have different questions and problems. They might be something like: I have a bunch of smart people on my marketing team, but I don’t feel like we’re a part of the conversation. Our customers and future customers don’t know about the direction we’re heading in; they still associate us with our legacy business. We’re losing ground to insurgents, or we can’t make a dent in the lead of our biggest competitors. How do we shake things up? And won’t anything new just be duplicative of what we already do in-house?

In both cases, the problem is a failure to simplify. The company not investing at all in marketing is suffering from analysis paralysis; they want to see an equation that will prove beyond all doubt that marketing is worth it, and that equation doesn’t exist, so they never invest in building their reputation. The more mature organization is getting lost in bureaucracy and the tactical mindset that takes over bureaucracies as each individual marketer focuses on hitting their KPIs without anyone refocusing the team on the big questions that really matter. 

In both cases, too, an obsession with numbers and data tends to obscure the big picture. The company that has never invested in marketing wants the mythical equation it will never get, so it’s ruling out marketing a priori. The company with a mature marketing team could probably consult its marketers on all the KPIs they’re hitting, and as professionals, they’ll tell a compelling story, but it doesn’t matter because the company’s reputation is still not where it needs to be.

If you’re in either of these positions, you need to zoom out.

I was inspired to write this week’s newsletter by marketing strategist and former Nike marketer Massimo Giunco’s analysis of Nike’s decay. Specifically, of the leadership’s focus on digital tactics instead of brand building, he wrote, “Nike invested a material amount of dollars (billions) into something that was less effective but easier to be measured vs something that was more effective but less easy to be measured."

That is weak adtech marketing in a nutshell: overly focused on what can be measured while neglecting the big picture — or so concerned about the gaps in measurement that the company never gets started on marketing in the first place.

Instead of making things so complicated, look at it like this.

If you're part of the industry conversation, you are succeeding at marketing. If your customers, partners, and those who influence them know what you stand for and are excited about supporting you, you're succeeding at marketing. If those stakeholders know how you're different from your competitors and what's special about you, you're succeeding at marketing.

The best CEOs intuitively get this. They are evangelists for their brand. They make news. They share insights. They have a clear message and share it widely and loudly. People care about them and their organization. They want to be a part of the movement the CEO/company is leading.

You don't need a fancy digital tool to understand B2B marketing. You need to simplify. Are the people who matter talking about you? Are you defining your reputation — or are others? Are you known for what you want to be known for? Do people know how you're different? Are you leading a movement?

These are the kinds of questions you need to answer to excel at B2B marketing. You don't need to write another "What is X?" white paper or blog post. You don’t need a fancy dashboard. You don’t need an equation that adds up to sufficient MQLs.

You need to identify the main problem impeding business growth, come up with a story that will help you solve that problem, identify ways to win with marketing, and execute them. You need to reach the people who matter with something worth saying to grow and shift your perception.

It’s not rocket science, but it requires vision and conviction. And those things are harder to buy than a dashboard.