Adapt to dynamic business environment to achieve set goals, Moroke urges marketers
By Felicia Nwosu
Ivan Moroke, CEO of Kantar Insight Division, South Africa, Regional Lead Inclusion and Diversity Kantar, Middle East and Africa, has called on marketers to remain adaptive to the ever changing business environment in order to achieve set goals.
Moroke made the call as the keynote speaker at this year’s MARKETING EDGE National Marketing Summit, with the theme, “The Sustainable Growth of Marketers: Adapting to Challenging Opportunities In a Disrupted World”, held virtually.
He added :“Whatever you want to call it, whether you want to call it purpose, you want to call it sustainability, in the past it used to be optional. It has changed; it is not optional anymore as shared value is now key to any brand marketing. It’s not an icebreaker anymore. “
He also identified the existence of a rapid change in technology and the quick adoption by consumers as well, noting that consumer-centrism was not enough, that at the core of it was about adaptability to solve consumers’ problems through adoption of technology.
The lead speaker pointed out that today’s marketers are under fire as a result of pressure to meet various needs of both the consumers and company’s bottom line which include tension between short-term sales.
While urging marketers to have in place a sustainable planning cycle to stay relevant, Moroke affirmed that those who have been able to adapt and adopt in the past have today become the titans of tomorrow, while new entrants are disrupting and rendering the non-adaptive brands extinct.
He observed that consumers’ consumption patterns have shifted drastically, making marketers’ jobs more challenging than ever.
He added that new trends were also emerging and changing the landscape with conversations focusing on issues of sustainability, social-cultural and political responsibility as well.
According to him, a lot of challenges are mounting pressures on the professionals in their roles and responsibility across companies and brands globally.
“In this changing environment, it is only the ones who are adapting well to these changes which will survive. There are so many challenges that new markets are supposed to be dealing with. It has different elements and when they get together they create this pep talk, which again, demands for adaptability.
“However, if you look across some of those elements, what might it be? As a marketer, you have got to look broadly at the environment that the consumers are living in. And this is just in terms of what business is selling.
“As a marketer, as a brand builder, as a business person, you have got to be addressing what you can call the rise of digital machines. Now as a marketer, you have got to be thinking about one of the biggest problems that all marketers have, is about this tension that you are having between short-term sales.
“What is going to be more important now is we must not be obsessed with either short-term sales or brand building. We must embrace the power of both. And short-term sales and brand building combined. You must consider challenging opportunities, which is category disruption, as all categories will be disrupted. It’s not even a matter of if they’ll be disrupted, it’s when will they be disrupted.”
The veteran marketer also canvassed the need to exhibit some components such as empathy, urging marketers to start off with understating the deep consumer provocation by leveraging big consumer data to deep human understanding while also embracing dynamism and focusing on learning and re-learning.
He encouraged marketers to embrace collaborations and partnership to enable organization to jointly satisfy the consumer.
He further stressed: “We have not followed up with the value of what we are doing. The highest level is what we call activation. It is talking about engaging partners, partners within the organization. We are an organization in silos. We should be going and having a conversation with all the other people in the organization to ask them, how can I help you? How can I make your work better?
“Whether it’s about the guys who are doing product development, the people who are looking at the core sense of customer compliance, the people who are looking at channels, the people who are looking at pricing, I understand about the consumer, how can I help you? It’s about driving impact, which is linked to your KPIs and to the business objectives.”
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