Why did Marketing fall off the boardroom agenda and why is it fashionable again?
But is this the right question?
The boardroom wants to know: Where does durable growth now come from?
Edison Partners define durable growth as driving strong revenue growth, while maintaining capital efficiency and profitability. It’s a grow wisely approach, rather than rapid growth, regardless of the costs.
‘Wise growth’ determines which functions matter at board level.
Why marketing lost the board
Marketing fell out of favour due to three main reasons:
· It stopped speaking the language of value creation.Too many marketing metrics: impressions, awareness and engagement rather than margin, cash flow or enterprise value.
· After the 2008 Financial crisis, certainty became king.Short-term revenue performance was prioritised over brand investment, which was treated as discretionary.
· Growth strategy migrated.Product, Finance and Sales all took ownership of the commercial agenda.
As Marketing became executional rather than strategic, the board rationally treated Marketing as a cost centre and elbowed them out.
What has changed since?
The environment has shifted.
Category growth has slowed.Customer acquisition costs have risen.Switching costs are less of a barrier to move.Differentiation is harder.
Efficiency alone can no longer drive shareholder returns.
Now, growth must be created, but not just relying on capturing your competitors’ share, as you can’t undercut them and you’re offering is not that different.
The revaluation of brand
Research from both McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group shows that companies with strong brands materially outperform on total shareholder return.
Why?
Because strong brands:
Sustain pricing power
Lower acquisition costs over time
Increase customer lifetime value
Provide resilience in downturns
Brand is not advertising; it is a financial asset that compounds. The Board are now rediscovering that.
The Credibility Gap Has Closed
Historically, the challenge was measurement.
Today, Marketing can demonstrate:
Incrementality, not just attribution, by measuring “Would they have bought anyway if they hadn’t seen this ad? + “Which ad did they click?”.
Cohort profitability by assessing whether newer customers are more profitable than old, identifying high value groups and the strategic impact on these groups by product, marketing and price adjustment.
Lifetime value relative to acquisition cost.
Marginal return curves on spend by optimising and knowing when to stop spending in particular channels, predicting future performance and avoiding overspending before a channel becomes saturated.
That turns Marketing from a communications function into a capital allocation function. And capital allocation belongs in the boardroom.
Customer experience/CX is now strategic
As our lives and the markets continue the shift to digital, the moat is no longer distribution, it is both perception and experience.
The organisation that best understands customer behaviour, shapes the value proposition, and ensures consistency across touchpoints creates defensible demand.
The Marketing team, if structured correctly, can own this integrative role.
The conclusion
Marketing loses influence when it behaves like communications, but it gains influence when it architects demand, pricing power and customer lifetime value.
The board’s question shifts from: “How much are we spending on marketing?”, to “How are we building durable demand and margin resilience?”.
That is a growth question. And growth is a board responsibility.
If Marketing can link brand investment to enterprise value, quantify long-term demand creation and report in financial terms, it belongs at the centre of strategy again.
And not because it’s fashionable again, because in low-growth markets, differentiation and trust are the only advantages that compound.
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