Marketing and comms disconnect damaging strategy, says CMO report

Hard evidence of serious alignment issues has been unearthed in a new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council report, which lays bare the disconnect in strategic media activities, return on investment and the performance of earned media arising from a lack of understanding between marketing and comms teams.

The CMO Council's top recommendations include the creation of cross-functional team meetings

Why aren’t marketing and comms aligned?

• Insights were gleaned from a survey of 150 brand leaders, together with a dozen in-depth interviews with top execs from the likes of IBM ad Nokia.

• Among marketers, the blame is laid squarely on the emergence of functional silos, with 55% of respondents attributing the disconnect to poor communication.

• Other factors thought to play a role are different key performance indicators and objectives, as well as problematic reporting lines, with both issues raised by 41% of respondents.

• Interestingly, comms leaders tell a different story, citing budget and the means to knit marketing and their roles closer together, as the main challenge.

• At present, financial resources are skewed heavily in favour of marketing courtesy of their tangible impact on revenue.

• This focus on the bottom line is reflected in the metrics cited by marketers as being important to their role, which is dominated by sales leads and revenue contributions.

• By contrast, the top metric among comms teams was awareness.

How can marketers bridge the gap with PR teams?

• The CMO Council's top recommendations include the creation of cross-functional team meetings. This was recommended by 77% of respondents.

• The report also calls for integrated campaigns (63%) and the introduction of shared goals and metrics (57%).