Drawing on interviews with leading marketers, researcher Fran Cassidy outlines the challenges and opportunities for collaboration between marketing and finance in the IPA report, ‘Building Bridges with Finance’.
The overarching finding was that more marketers must develop a stronger relationship with finance if they are to improve their marketing effectiveness and enhance their evidence-based decision-making.
The report provides analysis and recommendations in the following areas:
Building Bridges with Finance advances on the previous Culture First report which revealed, among other insights, a concentration of activity in effectiveness-minded organisations around collaboration between finance and marketing.
EffWeek 2018 also featured the presentation of research conducted with ISBA, that aimed to ascertain the level of effectiveness culture in brands and agencies. Over 200 practitioners in brands and agencies were surveyed. You can watch the presentation of the results by Libby Childs as well.
By presenting the role and function of marketing and its contribution to business growth, in terms which resonate with financial colleagues, our aim is to facilitate stronger partnerships between the marketing and finance departments in client businesses, and to foster more collaboration on business planning and investment strategies. To change the conversation with Finance, marketers need to be better at communicating the robust measurement and value of ‘the bricks’ used to build brands. Working together Marketing and Finance can create a new mental model of how marketing works. We are most interested in helping to develop a hybrid Marketing-Finance capability to drive positive culture change for long-term planning and reporting.