This week’s thought is inspired by a summer of sports and whether marketing should be playing so defensively.
I’ve been enjoying a summer of sport. I follow football and Formula 1, so England’s progress in the UEFA European Cup was a unique blend of joy and pain, and as I follow the British teams in F1, specifically McLaren, it’s a similar roller coaster.
You may not share my passion here, and hopefully you don’t need to for this post to work, as it’s inspired In both cases by a word the commentators seem to be repeating “defensive”.
England’s coach, Gareth Southgate, is a former international defender who is cautious in his approach despite having a wealth of attacking talent in the current England team, most of whom play for teams that play on the front foot. This defensive style of play is attributed to why England didn’t win the competition.
McLaren have had a long period of not winning races, they are now challenging, but keeping making mistakes. The prevailing opinion of the commentators and experts is that this fallow period of lack of success means they have lost their confidence in making positive strategy decisions, they are defensive. Decisions that are key in this tactical sport.
Which brings me to marketing, I think we sometimes have the same problem.
Like Gareth Southgate, we have been shaped into defensive players through our careers, and we take that into our roles as coaches or marketing leaders, with tactics shaped by a defensive, conservative approach that is most probably “data-led”.
Like McLaren we’ve lost our swagger. Marketing is often maligned, under scrutiny, we make decisions not to lose and protect our position, not the bold decisions that would make us a clear leader.
This was crystallized for me in a recent conversation I had about dealing with a request for a market leader to have a conversation with their company’s board.
The board of this company did not have a marketing representative on it, but like almost every person on the planet, like me having an opinion about England’s tactics or McLaren’s pit stop strategy, they have an opinion about the company’s marketing. There was some consternation about marketing facing this scrutiny; the management team felt that it should feel defensive.
And yet, while it’s our default position, something we seem to be hard-wired to these days, there was no need for defense; the marketing team was performing well, all the metrics were looking good, and the marketing leader and their leadership team colleagues could approach this meeting with confidence.
If you have the players, the team, and the experience, it’s time to play some offense.
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I’m a 3xCMO, now a marketing strategy advisor and podcast host at Rockstar CMO. Although, I’m not a rock star, but a marketing leader, strategist, content marketer, columnist, speaker, industry watcher, and creator of ART (Awareness, Revenue, and Trust) for the companies I work with. But most of all, I am an enthusiastic tea drinker.
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