For more than fifteen years, surfing the northern Oregon coast has become my transparently selfish escape from the grind of big city traffic, a dense cluster of daily meetings, and an entirely unhealthy level of exposure to PowerPoint. It is perhaps ironic that my chosen escape has become metaphor for working at a brand design firm.

In the most elementary terms, surfing requires you to examine the prevailing conditions, summoning experience and skill to be positioned at the right place, at the right time. It requires you to choose and hold a position in a wide ocean, at the expense of chasing other positions, to be aligned to catch what’s coming. I see great surfers do this with effortless efficiency. Others wear themselves out chasing swells back and forth along the beach, rarely taking enough notice to take full advantage.

Quite simply, surfing is strategy.

For anyone developing the business of a brand design firm, the similarities to surfing are apparent: Paddling like crazy in a quest for the epic moments, with a few days punctuated by a sense of drowning.

For brand design firms assessing their own strategic position, the process requires us to understand the prevailing market. As a recent industry study demonstrates, the conditions for brand design firms are shaping up quite nicely.

2006 Marketing Insight Study
In June, Seattle-based Phinney/Bischoff Design House (PBDH) partnered with Ipsos, a leading global research firm, to conduct an authoritative study of marketing professionals across multiple client industries including healthcare, technology, retail, manufacturing and financial services, among others. The study also included service agencies including advertising, design, research, etc.

Our impetus for this study was a desire to understand:

• The issues and opportunities marketers face within their organizations, and;

• The impact that rapidly evolving market conditions are having on the traditional roles of marketers.

Including 197 study participants, our objective was to evaluate the current health of the marketing industry, identify the priorities of the client community, understand the greatest perceived challenges to marketers and gain some sense for their future outlook.

The results demonstrate the often tumultuous relationship between marketing clients and their own internal stakeholders, and the remarkable opportunities uniquely available to brand design firms in meeting the priority needs of industry.

Survey landscape
The 2006 Marketing Insight Study involved client-side (120) and agency (77) marketing professionals, recruited from regional chapters of the American Marketing Association (AMA) and Marketing Communications Executives International (MCEI).

Of the respondents, 84% held senior decision-making roles (director, executive, owner, senior vice president), with an average marketing career tenure of 15.2 years.

The survey included a rich mix of business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies, and a diverse profile of agencies.

Key findings: marketing’s role & effectiveness
An essential component of any successful business plan is performance measures, the metrics by which success will be monitored. One of the most striking findings is the significant gap between what marketers believe to be the best measures of marketing performance, and those they perceive their executives use as the barometer for marketing success.

Marketers believe they should be far more focused on the customer experience, and attendance to customer needs, while indicating that their executive team places far greater importance on marketing’s short-term financial metrics, revenue growth and margin. These differences aren’t slight: 57% of marketers ranked “customer satisfaction” as one of their top three measures, while only 22% said it is considered a priority by their executives—an astounding 35% gap.

There is also a substantial gap between what marketers believe they could contribute to their company’s success, and their satisfaction with the execution of marketing in their own company. Somewhere between their responsibility and their authority to do marketing, there appears to be a significant organizational drag. This is reflected by the fact that while 82% of marketers believe that marketing is essential to the success of their organization, only 26% are highly satisfied with the marketing effectiveness of their organization. This 56% gap indicates a potentially significant level of frustration among your clients in their ability to fully realize their vision for marketing.

In an age when innovation is considered an essential competitive characteristic, only 25% of client-side marketers believe that their company is able to be innovative in its marketing.

The more complex decision-making systems of large companies may also significantly impact the effectiveness of marketing:

• Marketers for small/mid-size companies ($100 million annual gross revenues) are more than twice as likely as those in large companies to consider their marketing innovative.

• Marketing professionals in small/mid-sized companies generally have a significantly greater sense of contribution and influence than those in large companies.

• In small/mid-sized companies, marketers generally perceive that they are in greater alignment with their executives, compared to marketers in large companies.

The study reminds us that marketing is an integrative, organizational process, not an isolated function. Any misalignment between the strategic emphasis of marketers and the orientation of their executive leadership is likely to create an environment where objectives change, authority is diluted and approvals are elusive. While creative agencies are quite familiar with this territory, it is a timely reminder that your clients aren’t nuts; they simply face significant challenges in steering their own organizations.

Prove it
The clearest finding from the study is the significant opportunity for marketers to acquire better tools and methods to measure and prove the business performance of their marketing efforts. The ability to demonstrate a return on investment (ROI) for marketing expenditures is firmly entrenched as the most pressing issue, as 63% of clients identify it as a significant challenge. It is also the most pressing issue identified by agencies.

In the age of accountability, where nearly every facet of the business cycle is scrutinized and measured, “proof” is how marketers will gain ground with their executive leadership.

The case for brand design
The pillars of a brand design firm are to help client companies become known, understood and different. The unique ability for strategists and designers to imagine, create and deliver meaningful customer experiences is our reason to be. So, the results of the marketing industry study are particularly encouraging to those in the field of strategic brand design.