Do you have a marketing role on your board?

Author:

Lisa Lavis

Lisa co-founded Glow in 2000 and built it into a thriving agency. A former national marketing manager for global professional services firm Deloitte, Lisa combines strong, hands-on leadership skills with strategic marketing and business acumen. She has over 25 years’ experience of developing powerful creative campaigns and strategies.

Posted:

09/08/2024

Glow’s Vision

Why the future of boards will look very different

Who is on your board? – If it doesn’t include someone from marketing you could be damaging your brand and reputation.

Imagine a time when every executive board has a marketing or creative member. You might not think that’s such a big deal. But when compared against visualising a scenario where a board does not have a CEO (MD), CFO, HR / Head of People and Operations Director and you realise why it’s such an anomaly. And it’s not just marketing roles who are often lacking on executive boards, Wellbeing, Innovation, IT and other key functions are missed off too.

In most cases, these roles are picked up by the other job titles, so HR might look after marketing, Finance does the IT strategy and the CEO, alongside every other responsibility, picks up the Wellbeing function too.

What’s the problem you might ask? As long as a company recognises all of the important functions of a business and somebody is managing it, all is well.

It’s like the 800m Gold Medal winner (Paris 2024), Keely Hodgkinson, also swimming the 400m medley, just because she’s a sportsperson. It’s absurd. And frankly it would fail.

Lack of knowledge, time, expertise and passion is also the problem.

When any one of these functions in business are weakened, the success, output, outcome and knock on effects onto the entire business is affected. This impacts objectives not being met (or much slower than desired), tiredness, overwork and …. an overwhelming action list.

Sound familiar?

I have had the huge privilege of running and leading Glow for 24 years. I’ve worked with our successful clients and watched them grow, thrive and build great teams. I have been pivotal in successful acquisitions and seen what success feels and sounds like. I’ve also witnessed failures, poor mental and physical health and people & companies crashing and burning out.

I am passionate about business and want to impart my knowledge so that all my connections can achieve great things. And the way to do this is to load our executive boards differently.

In the future, and in my future, that is now, all companies will have on their board a marketing or creative role sitting on them. To help you on this transition, you can start by taking inspiration from our own vision & mission statements (you’re very welcome)…

Glow’s Vision is:

To help see a time when there is a brand, marketing or creative job role on every executive board.

Glow’s Mission is:

To empower businesses with comprehensive branding, marketing, communications, and innovative design solutions that drive growth, influence, and leadership recognition. We ensure that creative roles add strategic value and are integral to executive decision-making processes.

Here’s why:

Your brand and reputation defines a business

The brand and reputation of a company (how good or bad) defines a business. It will resonate with the staff it employs, the customers who choose to work with it, and its values and vision. And looking after your brand requires senior strategic and creative insight at the board level. Whether this is a Chief Brand Officer (CBO), a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) a Marketing Director or a Head of Brand – the title is personal to a company – it needs to be a savvy marketing professional who will work closely with the other board members; People, Finance, Operations, Commercial and Leadership to co-create and deliver a company’s strategy.

Strategy involves your brand

Every strategic decision a company makes, involves its brand. At the offset, if the brand / marketing role is on the board it will not only help curate the right decision but it will improve the clarity of the message (internally and externally). The function will speed up the communication roll out to all, ensuring it is delivered on point and with the correct tone, pace and style. Which equals a better result and investment of time, money and resources.

Efficient approvals

Brand (marketing, creative, campaign) project signs off’s can be clunky. This is because the marketing manager, co-ordinator/executive – in particular, within SMEs– has to go to a member of the board, who are busy managing operations, strategy and their own role, for the project to go ahead and get sign off. As a result, everything takes longer. This has an effect on the strategic campaign rollout, impacting many facets of the business including business development and recruitment. By having a board member whose role is brand/marketing, campaign rollouts will quicken significantly, resulting in meeting the business objectives at pace too.

Aspirational and motivational

For aspiring, ambitious and talented creative, brand and marketing professionals need to see that becoming an executive board member/director is not only attainable and a role to aspire to but is normal and a function that is respected at the very top.

So, dive in, take or adapt Glow’s vision and mission too if you like, but make sure you get a creative or marketing role on your board.

I promise you; your future self will thank you.