What have BP, BPB, BA, Imperial Tobacco, Legal & General, Marks & Spencer, W Morrison, Rentokil Initial, SAB Miller, Tesco and Vodafone got in common? Two things: one, they are all FTSE top 100 companies; and two, they have all got a marketer or someone carrying out a marketing function at main board level. This finding comes from web-based research carried out by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) at the end of last year (non-executive board members were excluded from the findings).

While this figure is no cause for celebration, it is an improvement from 2004 when similar research found that there were only four FTSE 100 companies with a marketing director on the board. They were Abbey National, BP, Imperial Tobacco and Tesco – Abbey is not on this year's list as it is no longer a FTSE top 100.

Zero representation

B2B Marketing contacted Yell and Sage in an effort to understand why marketing is not represented on their respective boards. A spokesperson from Sage comments, “Sage operates a decentralised structure with each operating company in each country driving its own marketing at a local, rather than at a central, level.” Further defending why there's no marketing director at group board level the spokesperson says: “The board has extensive marketing experience including Paul Stobart, CEO who was previously head of Interbrand and Tamara Ingham, a non-executive director who is a senior executive at WPP.”

This practice of non-representation is indicative of a wider attitude towards marketing, especially the attitude of those that sit on FTSE 100 boards. Marketing is dismissed as an 'everyman' discipline unlike finance or sales which more often than not get the coveted place.

A spokesperson at Yell did not claim that its board was overflowing with marketing talent in the guise of the strategy/finance/commercial director. Instead it stated that Ann Francke, chief marketing officer, sits on the senior management group which falls just below the main board, though the spokesperson was unwilling to speculate whether it would become a board-level position in the future.

Vodafone has had a chief marketing officer on the board since 2003. Bobby Leach, head of group media relations, comments, “The Vodafone brand is currently in 18 countries and a lot of what we do in terms of building the brand – advertising, sponsorship etc. – needs to be coordinated centrally and so we elected to have marketing represented at board level.”

Examining the statistics

On closer examination of the CIM research, 11 per cent seems a little optimistic as only half actually have the word 'marketing' in their title and fewer still use it exclusively in their job title ie. 'chief marketing officer' or 'marketing director'. Christine Cryne, chief executive of the CIM admits that the results get worse if you start getting pedantic. This is how a pedant may view the outcome.

There are only two thoroughbred marketers: Peter Bamford, chief marketing officer at Vodafone and Mark Sherrington, marketing director at SABMiller.

For the remainder, marketing is just part of the job role. For instance: John Manzoni at BP is 'chief executive - refining & marketing'; Graham Blashill at Imperial Tobacco has the more common 'sales & marketing director' title; while Steven Sharp at Marks & Spencer is Jack-of-all-trades as 'executive director marketing, e-commerce, store design & development'.

Then there are the ones who don't even have 'marketing' in their job title. Martin George at BA is 'commercial director' although his responsibilities are marketing-heavy, looking after development of the website and global PR. At BPB, where Paul Withers is 'business development director', marketing seems to be a bit of an add-on. His biography reads: “Now group MD of BPB's businesses in Asia, South America, Mexico and Egypt, with additional responsibility for the group's acquisition programme and for group marketing”.

A call to action

Cryne advocates that the profession takes matters into its own hands, “marketers need to make that extra effort to educate colleagues and gain recognition about what they do. They need to demonstrate that marketing is increasingly a science and much more than just t-shirts and pens.” Essentially the board must be forced to recognise marketing's value to the bottom line. -

One area which most large organisations are coming around to recognising is brand. US software company Change Point was sold in 2004 for $100 million and when the VP of Europe was asked whether it was worth it, he replied, “Probably not but was our brand worth $100 million? Absolutely.” With the introduction of new accounting rules on the valuation of acquired intangible assets, brands will now feature strongly on the balance sheets. Cryne comments, “the board will need to be able to talk to investors in a way that incorporates marketing thinking. Marketers are best placed to do this.”

She continues: “Every board needs to think about how much better they'd be with a marketer.” The best way to do this is to think about how consistent, effective and powerful the marketing is at those FTSE 100s mentioned, especially Tesco and Vodafone.

It's also worth considering that marketing is represented at board-level on over three-quarters of the UK's smallest companies (Source: CIM research 05). Surely 2.7 million business decision-makers can't all be wrong.

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