The Great Marketing Declutter: New Accenture Research Reveals How a Small Group of Marketers Are Thriving Despite Constant Market Disruption
October 13 2021 - 7:59AM
Business Wire
Research finds certain marketing organizations
are outperforming their peers in revenue growth, profitability and
customer satisfaction
Nearly 70% of marketing executives globally say that the past
year has completely exhausted their employees, found new research
from Accenture (NYSE: ACN). While this comes as no surprise given
the heightened levels of employee burnout cited around the world,
there is a silver lining.
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Thrivers perform far better than
Survivors. (Photo: Business Wire)
Produced by Accenture Interactive and titled, “The Great
Marketing Declutter,” the report identified a small group of
marketers — just 17% of more than 1,000 marketing executives
surveyed — whose marketing organizations are thriving despite all
of the change, uncertainty and complexity from the past 18 months.
This group — which the research identifies as “Thrivers” — found
the vast majority (86%) of their employees at these organizations
have been energized by a new purpose of servicing customers’
rapidly changing motivations.
Thrivers are decluttering marketing to manage complexities, with
59% of them noting that their marketing organization is much
stronger today than last year because they’ve been pushed to think
about marketing entirely differently. Thrivers have zeroed in on
their customers’ evolving motivations and what’s needed to serve
them in smarter, better ways. They’ve focused on what matters,
discarded what doesn’t, and rewired the rest. As a result, they
find greater meaning in their work, which is critical to serving
the business and its customers and to retaining and attracting
employees.
The report breaks the remaining respondents down into two other
groups, based on specific aspects of their customer relationships:
“Strivers” — accounting for two-thirds (66%) of the executives
surveyed — who have some autonomy to meet customer needs but have
limited awareness of customer changes; and “Survivors” — accounting
for the remaining 17% — who are burnt out and not in tune with the
pulse of customer change, assuming that such change is only
temporary.
“Marketers who have seized the pandemic as a forcing function to
redefine what they do, how they do it, and the overall role of
marketing in business are the ones who have become successful and
are driving business growth,” said Jeannine Falcone, global
marketing services lead, Accenture Interactive. “In-the-moment
relevancy is critical for today’s brands, and you can’t do that if
you’re operating from the same old playbook.”
Thrivers Cut Through the Clutter and Outperform
Survivors
The research found that Thrivers are orienting their marketing
organization around three important guiding principles: aligning
with their [company’s] purpose; helping their customers; and
improving how their marketing organization works. The research
further pinpoints how Thrivers are leading the way in both their
thinking and actions, which can be boiled down to the following
five guidelines.
- Get reacquainted with your customer: Accepting that the
customers they once knew have changed, Thrivers have tossed out
their old beliefs about customer preferences and know that
assumptions can be dangerous. They listen to customers and rewire
marketing around who customers are at a moment in time and rank
customer satisfaction as their top measure of success.
- Find your collective difference: Knowing that delivering
differentiation on customer experience takes unity and
collaboration, Thrivers are 60% more likely than Survivors to
report that customer input is highly critical to key business
decisions on customer experience. They recognize that synching all
functions — product development, commerce, sales, service and
marketing — is necessary to unleash differentiation.
- Move at the pace of change: The overwhelming majority of
Thrivers (91%) believe that customers’ behaviors are changing
faster than ever. As a result, they aim to deliver messages,
content and experiences that are relevant to customers’ real-time
needs. In addition, they’re nearly 50% more likely than Survivors
(95% vs. 65%) to have increased their investments to scale at
speed.
- Figure out what no one wants to do: The marketing
ecosystem has become exponentially more complex due to an explosion
of touchpoints, technologies, regulatory issues and partners.
Thrivers have outwitted complexity by leaning into process
automation and industrializing operations, and they are
significantly more likely than Survivors to invest more to improve
the ways of working with ecosystem partners (91% vs. 56%). They are
equally thoughtful about discarding tasks as they are about
completing them, giving their marketing organization the edge
needed to succeed.
- Own what you want to stand for: Thrivers own their brand
purpose, empathetically and authentically connecting with customers
and delivering on what customers value. They are five times more
likely than Survivors to view the shifts in pandemic-fueled
customer values as an opportunity to rethink marketing’s role and
reimagine their brand purpose.
The report also provides examples of how some leading
organizations — including Blue Buffalo, Diageo, Direct Line Group
and NRMA Insurance — have decluttered their marketing models for
success. The full report can be found here.
About the Research
From June to July 2021, Accenture Research and Accenture
Interactive surveyed 1,022 marketing executives worldwide, across
19 countries and 19 industries to study the way that marketing
leaders felt and reacted to the changes they perceived in their
customers/consumers over the past year (2020) and how that
contributed to their marketing organizations’ resilience.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global professional services company with leading
capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Combining unmatched
experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries,
we offer Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and
Operations services — all powered by the world’s largest network of
Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. Our 624,000
people deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity
every day, serving clients in more than 120 countries. We embrace
the power of change to create value and shared success for our
clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us
at www.accenture.com.
Accenture Interactive is reimagining business through
experience. We drive sustainable growth by creating meaningful
experiences that live at the intersection of purpose and
innovation. By connecting deep human and business insights with the
possibilities of technology, we design, build, communicate and run
experiences that make lives easier, more productive and rewarding.
Accenture Interactive is ranked the world’s largest digital agency
by Ad Age and has been named a Most Innovative Company by Fast
Company. To learn more, follow us @AccentureACTIVE visit
www.accentureinteractive.com
This content is provided for general information purposes and is
not intended to be used in place of consultation with our
professional advisors.
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Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. Accenture and
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Kelly Coffed Accenture +1 404 219 3100
kelly.coffed@accenture.com
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