EMM Group

Embedding a Strategic Framework for Marketing Excellence Helped Sustain Growth Through a Recession

Background

A Fortune 50 industrial client, long known for financial and engineering prowess, recognized that their historical pathway to growth through acquisitions and technical product innovation was not going to enable them to meet their growth objectives. After a review of their organization, they recognized that their marketing function, unlike finance and engineering, was not strategic and focused primarily on sales support and communications. They were not engaging in the types of strategic marketing activities that enable growth.

Action Plan

The client realized that fundamentally shifting the role of marketing around the world and across over 150,000 employees would take a thoughtful and measured approach. The first thing they did in collaboration with EMM Group was to identify the “new” role of marketing within their organization. They created a high level marketing framework that included what marketing already did—marketing communications and sales support—and added what they wanted marketing to do: market assessment; segmentation and targeting; value proposition and pricing; integrated marketing planning; strategy and innovation; and marketing performance metrics.

Next, they piloted the framework in three different businesses in three different countries. Their goal was to prove that by applying best-in-class marketing skills, they could accelerate growth. Each market pilot achieved growth rates that surpassed similar businesses by 20-30%. Based on the success of the pilots and the momentum gained, the company went on to institutionalize the framework throughout the organization.

Results

After seven years, the company’s marketing organization has grown significantly in both scope and responsibility. Over the recent great recession, they attributed their ability to achieve above market growth to their marketing excellence efforts. Today, marketing has a seat at the table and has conducted hundreds of successful initiatives to accelerate or engineer faster than expected growth.

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