What you need to know:

• ADMA has a new chair: Former Standard Chartered Bank, Samsung, Nestlé and Procter & Gamble marketing chief David Morgan takes up the position after Steve Brennen steps back after a 10-year tenure into a vice-chair position.
• An advisory committee refresh is also on its way in coming weeks.
• But don’t read this as a change on how ADMA plans to remain relevant in future: The ongoing and incoming chairs, plus CEO, Andrea Martens, have committed to a doubling down on the association’s existing two-pronged strategy – regulatory support and capability building – as things get a shake-up.
• For both Morgan and Martens, helping marketing leaders reclaim the growth mantle is a critical focus as well, and one both believe has a new lease on life through AI, cross-functional collaboration and aligning what marketers are ‘doing’ to business growth imperatives.

Marketing’s primary role and function is to grow the business. Problem is, many are only being allowed to do half the job. Over the last 10 years, we have seen a chipping away of marketing leaders controlling price and product – two of the 4Ps instrumental to directly delivering growth – in favour of focus on ever-more complex promotional mechanisms, channels and data at their disposal.

It's perhaps directly correlated that marketing having a seat at the c-suite table has also declined, while data and measurement scrutiny is on the up – often skewing prioritisation and focus on short-term hits over long-term plays, further blunting the marketer’s strategic pen.

Quarterly targets and reporting may be partially to blame - especially over the last pressured year.

But the upshot is marketers have increasingly become ‘doers’, measured on their ability to ‘do’ something, rather than as strategic growth contributors, reckons ADMA’s newly announced chair, David Morgan. Unfortunately, what marketers ‘do’ has become increasingly disconnected to business outcomes and strategic growth.

“My worry is we’ve trained marketers to ‘do’, and organisations now believe marketers ‘do’ stuff. They ‘do’ good stuff and interesting stuff, and they ‘do’ stuff that is measured. But the measurement methodologies and outcomes are actually not as relatable to business growth as would be helpful,” Morgan tells Mi3. “There’s an irrelevance to what marketers are actually being tasked with ‘doing’ as a function, which should be growing the business.

“My greater hope – and I think you can start to see it and feel it – is that AI is going to regenerate marketers’ ownership of the data drivers, the metrics and tasks that grow a business, so they will naturally stop being doers and start being thinkers and leaders.”

How does that manifest?

“Well, AI is the idiot’s guide to data management; you don’t have to be a data analyst anymore,” Morgan continues. “The last 10 years have all been about data analytics, but now we’ve actually got tools in place that skip over the fact you don’t need to be a statistician or mathematician fundamentally. If we manage AI and the application of AI to the way we do our jobs… and if marketers are choiceful, they can do this.”

ADMA CEO, Andrea Martens, agrees marketers must get better at looking at growth through a similar lens to how businesses look at it. Tapping CPG brand and marketing experience, she uses net revenue management as an example. Net revenue management by definition is the practice of applying data and analytics to understand then predict consumer appetite for different products at different times across various channels, and adjusting pricing and product mix accordingly.

“That arguably should be in every marketer’s toolkit. That’s about the ability to understand exactly what their pricing and promotion feeds right through to the profitability for the organisation,” Martens says. “That may not be core to what their roles are day-to-day, however. But if it’s not within their core remit, then understanding it, learning the skills of it, and being able to be part of the conversation is critical.

“Some marketers will have the full 4P remit: They will have price, promotion, product and distribution and be able to play all the different mixes; some won’t. My counsel would be this: Find your way into understanding what the other growth levers the organisation is playing with are, then see how the marketing activity you are doing can feed into that.”

By way of example, Martens focuses on the world of personal care products.

“While price may not have been within the remit you have, portfolio was. You very clearly understood the shopper, saw the shopper coming in and buying only at a minimal price point, therefore you have the power as the marketer to recommend a base brand. This helps the business then say, instead of promoting high/low off your premium product, we have a base brand to be able to absorb all the saver shoppers. That is something in a marketer’s control,” she explains.

“As the role of marketing has narrowed in some organisations, either by design or by time, I’d encourage marketers not to look in, but look out and see where they need to collaborate with finance, and with sales and with category. I can affect growth, but it means partnering with those functions and seeing what role my remit does play so I can enable them to deliver the net revenue management initiatives they need to deliver.”

Like Morgan, Martens also stresses the ultimate role of the CMO, as part of the leadership team, is to step back and look at things more strategically.

“That is one of the challenging things when you’re going towards daily, weekly, monthly sales. But try to take that longer-term view, and importantly, look at collaboration with those partner functions, and how you can tap into each other to enable broader organisational growth, rather than necessarily just the single-minded metrics we might be looking at it from a campaign perspective,” she advises.

New-look ADMA board and advisory committee

Morgan and Martens’ comments were made as ADMA officially announced Morgan as its new chair, replacing longstanding chair and former Uber and eBay marketing leader, Steve Brennen. Brennen steps down after a 10-year stint but will retain an active role by taking up a vice-chair’s position. He first joined the ADMA board 20 years ago.

“The marketing industry has changed enormously over the last decade, with every marketer facing unprecedented disruption,” Brennen said. “It’s been a genuine honour to have been entrusted with the job of helping guide the industry through challenges like Covid, sweeping regulatory reform and rapid digitisation during my time as Chair of ADMA’s Advisory Board.”

Morgan, who has been on the board since 2021, brings more than 35 years’ practical marketing experience, locally, regionally and globally, to the chair’s post, along with business, strategic consulting and other chair and board advisory roles. During his career, Morgan has held global marketing leadership titles with Samsung, Citibank, Procter & Gamble, Nestlé and Standard Chartered, the world’s third largest bank. Over the last decade or so as founder of MacMorgan, he has led business growth, marketing and customer experience transformation for a raft of large Australian businesses and brands. Morgan has also had an ongoing hand in education and mentoring, training over 10,000 marketers globally and lecturing at international universities.

“Under David’s leadership, our focus will continue to be empowering marketers at all levels to lead growth, drive strategy and prove the commercial impact of marketing,” Martens says.

ADMA has also flagged plans to refresh several positions within its advisory committee. This currently includes eight other marketing industry professionals: Tourism Australia’s CMO, Susan Coghill, Hourigan International partner, Stuart Tucker, Suncorp EGM marketing and customer, Mim Haysom, Mediabrands CEO, Mark Coad, Commonwealth Bank CMO, Jo Boundy, former Facebook senior leader, Paul McCrory, and Meta’s current group industry director, Naomi Shepherd. Updates are due in coming weeks.

ADMA’s doubling down on strategy

Alongside Morgan’s appointment, ADMA said it’s now working to accelerate its strategic direction, all with a view of reinforcing marketing as a central growth driver in the wider business community. The key message from the departing and incoming chairs, plus Martens, was the intention to double down on its two-part strategy: Regulation and capability building.

On the regulatory front, the impetus is on supporting the industry through the sweeping regulatory changes that have started to come through, including part one of an expected two-tranche overhaul of Australia’s Privacy Act. The association noted its strengthening, ongoing relationships with Australia’s regulators as of key benefit to marketers navigating the additional regulatory hurdles sure to come their way.

On the capability front, ADMA pointed to its Capability Compass, launched last year as a way for marketers to benchmark skill sets of their teams and understand which gaps need to be filled. 

Some basic holes were bluntly exposed in a 2024 ADMA survey of 150 Australian marketers conducted with virtual professor, Mark Ritson, which found only 32 per cent of respondents could articulate what the 4Ps stand for. Per Ritson: “It’s hilariously bad. We’re not talking about competence or skills or capabilities yet – we’re just pointing out most marketers don’t know anything about marketing.”

More pragmatically, Martens flagged a ‘State of the Nation’ report coming later this year that will show where key capability gaps lie against the 65 skills ADMA benchmarks.