Giving CMOs A Seat On Their Company’s Board Will Lead To A Difference, Says CK Birla Group’s Deepali Naair

Marketing as a discipline as well as an industry, has evolved but remains the same in a lot of ways. Deepali Naair, Group CMO, CK Birla Group understands that the biggest challenge in the marketing industry stems from the fact that the marketing partners and marketing agencies have petite margins due to which they do not have good quality talent/workforce employed on suggestions, brands and the services that they offer.  

She cites from experience, “When I passed out from college, Lintas and Unilever had the same CTC at campus, which has further ensured that the talent is not on the agency side. CMOs, who should be doing something about the talent gap, are not doing anything about it. It becomes difficult for a CMO to convince the senior management that they are trying to focus on quality, hence, a higher-paid workforce. This reasoning does not work every single time, especially when somebody is ready to do the same at a lower cost for the company.” 

The Snag 

Another challenge, as per Naair, on the client side is that due to the fragmentation of work; with different mandates such as PR, content creation, content distribution, performance marketing, influencer marketing, brand performance, social media etc, nobody is looking at integrating these functions. “In the good old days, a lot of integration was done by the ATL agencies – you could call the CEO of the ATL agency and he would make sure that the CMO of the brand would be inducted into the brand. That partnership has gone, which means there is a larger responsibility on the CMO and the CMO’s team to ensure that the brand narrative remains common across all these domains, which the people have not been trained to do.” 

Due to these concerns, it further shoots up that startup founders, CEOs, and boards involved in hiring CMOs and marketing teams - their briefs over the years have remained the same. “Their expectations as seniors of a brand, haven’t changed – they want the brand to be able to command a premium, they want better topline and bottom line, and they want the marketing team to create that kind of a partnership, and ensure that everything works – but honestly, the system is not working,” Naair outlined. 

This, in turn, has led to a lot of the startup founders and boards questioning if marketing as a whole, is working or not. She expressed her disheartenment, “Marketing is getting the short shrift, and is being questioned whether marketing is relevant and do we need the CMO role at all.” 

The Solution 

The solution to this, according to Naair, is that she wants the quality marketing agencies in the market to step up and say that they will not pitch, and tell brands that they would not do it free for them, or be clear that they would charge a premium 

“From the brands’ side, it needs the courage from CMOs to say that we want to do things differently. Some of the CMOs being influential in their company boards, can set a distinct example. Giving CMOs a seat on the company’s board will also lead to a difference,” Naair reiterated. 

The role of PR 

She also spoke about the growing significance of PR, and the adjacency of the roles of PR and marketing in companies, over some time. “PR has evolved into digital and moved beyond newspapers and magazines. Marketing professionals need to have an understanding of PR so that they can utilise it appropriately alongside the other marketing channels available to them.” 

If allowed by media baron, Rupert Murdoch to run a media company as the CMO and discussing the marketing channels she would bet on, Naair understands that one needs to challenge the current business models that we have. “I wouldn’t think radio, TV or print. I would focus on what ties all this together. I would invest in content creation and distribution – it needs to be agile and nimble to get into any channel – content transcends from radio, print, TV to digital and beyond.” 

Naair also underlined that a large intervention of AI from a productised platform perspective, especially on the content distribution side and also on a low-end creation side would be something which is needed, and not from a day-to-day agency perspective. “Coming back to my point about a lot of marketing professionals, they do not know how to do brand narratives, and that’s where the human element of content creation in that organisation would come in from a consulting perspective. It would be like doing a McKinsey of content creation, charge a premium and do the brand narratives for brands, and further have an execution arm for that organisation, too.” 

Wrapping up on the opinion that charging a premium would work, Naair believes that despite being housed in India, a company can service any part of the world – be it a client within India itself or even in Europe or the US. “The model will work – because you will hire better talent, demonstrate better effectiveness, and therefore, you would be able to charge a premium,” she concluded. 

Neha Kalra

BW Reporters She is the Senior Editorial Lead at Businessworld and majorly covers pieces on advertising, marketing, branding and experiential marketing. She writes closely for BW Marketing World and Everything Experiential.