4Vs please, Bob
Hey kids, there’s a new marketing acronym on the block. You’ve heard of the 4Ps and the 7Ps, and the 3Cs, 4Cs and 5Cs. Well, now there are the 4Vs.
This is according to Unilever’s new CEO Fernando Fernandez, who is doubling down on his plan to boost trust in the FMCG giant’s brands by upping its focus on influencer marketing.
The 4Vs stand for volume, virality, variety and velocity. In other words, more content by more creators, distributed at pace in the hope it will be shared at scale.
Fernandez said he worked closely with Unilever’s marketers to develop this model as he believes it will play a key role in the business’s transformation. Half of the marketing budget will now be invested in influencer activity. Because, as he asserted last month, consumers are inherently “suspicious” of brands, and the best way to combat that is by getting “others” to speak on their behalf.
How Unilever’s hugely skilled marketing team feels about years of brand building being effectively dismissed and the focus being shifted to one notoriously untrustworthy channel is anyone’s guess.
Clearly the business needs to do something to kick-start growth. But ploughing such a vast proportion of its marketing budget into influencer marketing doesn’t feel like the solution, even with a snazzy new acronym to package it up.
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New BFF
Given the current climate, budgets being cut is a very real problem marketers are facing across the board.
But something that certainly won’t help when these conversations arise is the fact just 26.2% of marketers describe their relationship with the CFO and finance as key. Worryingly, this only rises to 41.9% among CMOs.
That’s despite the vast majority of marketers across all levels saying financial literacy will become increasingly essential over the next three years. All this is according to our latest Career & Salary Survey data.
It paints a pretty damning picture. If marketers don’t have a close relationship with finance and if they don’t communicate the value of what they do in a meaningful way, it’s much easier for the CFO to see marketing as expendable.
If you’re only ever speaking to finance when you want something, the relationship becomes entirely transactional. Finance is in no way invested.
Marketers are putting far more weight behind their relationships with the CEO and sales, with around half prioritising these ties, rising to 69.4% and 61%, respectively, among CMOs.
Of course, it’s important to have close ties with the CEO, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of all other relationships. Or simply so they’ll do your bidding. Gousto’s Sally Matthews and Moonpig’s Rhea Fox both liken it in the feature below to getting your mum or dad on side so they’ll fight your battles.
There’s no downside to improving the relationship with finance. It will take time up front – it means setting clear objectives and ensuring everyone is on the same page – but by regularly communicating with the CFO, the relationship becomes far less transactional and ultimately less adversarial.
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Spend smarter
While no marketer wants their budget to be cut, it’s also incumbent on the CMO to ensure money is being invested in the optimum way.
An example of this came from B2B fintech Blackline this week. Since joining the business a year ago, CMO Emily Campbell has completely overhauled how marketing is viewed, transforming it from a service-led function into a strategic growth driver.
This meant shifting focus away from events and webinars, and instead concentrating on digital marketing and looking to engage customers at every stage of the buying process, while at the same time better defining the Blackline brand and thinking more long term.
For Blackline, spending smarter – not more – has been key. “We’re seeing more leads coming and more revenue for the company coming from less spend,” Campbell told us.
It’s proof again of the power of brand investment in B2B, and that doing the right thing at the right time is crucial.
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The week ahead
We’ll be kicking off a new series of content next week exploring the state of academia and how crucial marketing qualifications have been in advancing people’s careers.
