ANA: Industry Has Not Aligned on Marketers’ Growth Agenda

The advertising and marketing ecosystem is fueled by brand budgets, but agencies, publishers, vendors, and other constituents have not been aligned on marketer growth. That’s the view of Bob Liodice, CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), who sat down exclusively with ADWEEK at the organization’s flagship Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando, FL. “The ability to pull the industry to be truly aligned with that was lacking significantly,” he said. “That's why we have the level of transparency issues we have. That's why we have concerns about the way we deal with things on a more global basis, like privacy.” The ANA is working to align groups around cross-industry coalitions that prioritize the marketers’ agenda above companies’ individual interests. He pointed to Aquila, the group’s cross-media measurement initiative, as an example. “Brands have to step forward and say, ‘this is what we need to get done.’ And if we don't do this collaboratively, we're going to sub-optimize the growth agenda,” he said. Liodice spoke with ADWEEK about how the ANA is rallying a fragmented industry around marketers’ biggest challenges, from transparency to translating their value to the C-suite. ADWEEK: Why is it so challenging to align the industry around brand growth? The issue really lies in what I would call a very large dichotomy between marketers, agencies, and sell-side. Agencies and sell-side have their own respective interests. They are corporate entities. They are expected to drive growth for their shareholders. But, in my opinion, we're not optimizing the strategic foundation necessary for collaboration to the best that we can. You need to do this through the lens of the marketer. It's the brand's money. Not that it needs to be exclusively their agenda, but it should be predominantly their agenda. Does inherent competition between marketers make it difficult to align on priorities? It's the infrastructure of the industry. Marketers pursue what they need to pursue to grow their respective businesses. Mark Pritchard [chief brand officer of Procter & Gamble] has been very vocal in saying, ‘This should not be a share of market game. It needs to be a market growth game.’ Because we will all win far more if we accelerate the market as opposed to beat each other over the head going through a share of market battle. You brought up transparency in your speech. It’s been eight years since the ANA began looking into media transparency. How has the conversation evolved? A lack of transparency truly undercuts our ability to grow. The flip side is marketers have to take ownership of the things they can control. We found back to 2016, marketers were fairly negligent in managing the client-agency relationship. In fact, we talked to many significant marketers that indicated that they hadn't updated their contract in more than five years. What we're seeing now is the recognition that marketers have to penetrate the opacity of the ecosystem. As we saw in the [ANA] programmatic media study, marketers did not understand that 15% of the impressions [they were buying] were on made for advertising sites. They were clueless. You just can't have your head buried in the ground and expect Nirvana to prevail. You have to grab the bull by the horns, know where those key leverage points are, and manage them with a level of aggressiveness. The CMO job is so complex today. How is the ANA helping them navigate these issues? We're restructuring the ANA to build eight practices, but then to connect at the top to create the strategies and areas of focus, so that we have the maximum amount of impact. When we developed the first global growth agenda, one of the areas that were underserved was media. So we created the Media and Measurement Leadership Council, a group of 150 or so chief media officers or senior measurement executives, and they become the expertise that the ANA can leverage to transform the agenda to what best serves the broadest needs. Then we build the infrastructure, products, services, and portfolio of things that marketers can engage in to be able to fulfill those objectives. How difficult is it to keep the momentum on these initiatives when CMO tenure is so short? How is the ANA tackling the challenge of keeping CMOs in their jobs longer? The CMO turnover level is reflective of the CEO's expectations being inconsistent with the reality of what a CMO has to do. We are in the business for the long term. You build brands, not in a day, but over a lifetime. Performance marketing is a Band-Aid for instantaneous growth, but not long-lasting growth. So I don't think that the expectations of the CMO by the CEO community are necessarily fair and balanced. Is that something the ANA needs to focus on: how to translate CMO pressures to the CEO, and train them on how to communicate their value to the C-suite better? There is this feeling that marketers should be able to push a button, produce great creative, and all the sudden, that translates to instantaneous growth. It doesn't happen that way, it's never happened that way. We work with an affiliate organization called the Institute For Real Growth, which is set up to pursue how senior marketers should behave differently to optimize business results and, theoretically, relationships within the C-suite. We're still learning as we're going. It hasn't yet been as fully institutionalized as we'd like. One of the big priorities you brought up for the ANA is talent. Antonio Lucio, CMO of HP, dedicated his session to how to make talent more engaged and happier at work to improve business outcomes. Is the ANA planning to do more on that front? There is dissatisfaction within the entire corporate workflow. But as a nonprofit trade association, we have to delineate between what we can control and what is broader HR policy. That's not to say that we can't dive deeper into how individuals within the marketing industry are feeling, how they're reacting to their obligations. One challenge for marketers that didn’t come up on stage is navigating how to speak to consumers in a polarized society, where there’s a chance they’ll draw unintended backlash. This is particularly tense ahead of the U.S. election. Is the ANA doing anything to guide marketers on these difficult decisions? We have to focus on what is going to add to growth, not what is going to be an election sensitive media buying strategy for the next month or two. What do [CMOs] expect to get out of such a short-term, myopic thinking? Take DEI. From a people management standpoint, we can't turn our backs on that. But we have to recognize that inclusive and multicultural marketing are extremely powerful engines for growth. Where are the marketers? They are way under spending. So we are advocating, understand where your growth is coming from and have the courage to make those types of investments accordingly. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Agencies

ANA: The Industry Has Not Aligned Around Marketers’ Growth Agenda

Bob Liodice sat down with ADWEEK at ANA Masters of Marketing to chat about the organization’s priorities and challenges heading into 2025

Alison Weissbrot

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Alison Weissbrot