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by Geoffrey McDonald Bowll

on Mar 19

Guerrilla Guide: Pitching to a board

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Selling an idea to your bored dad

I’m at The Hyatt, all glitz and glamour and ordinary food. It’s a lunch organised by the Australian Institute of Company Directors and there are some 400 of them crammed in. The subject is ‘Marketing and the Role of the Board’ and Sir Rod Carnegie is speaking. He’s about 80, has three or four degrees, has worked all over the world and been on stacks of boards. He’s raving about a book on marketing that some old mate of his wrote. Questions are allowed from the floor.

A bloke who’s very high up in a certain marketing industry association waddles to his feet and asks Sir Rod what sort of education board members should undertake to get a better grip on marketing? Sir Rod says, and I quote word for word, “A two- or three-week course ought to give you what you need”. This is from an ‘expert’ promoting marketing.

This neatly puts the marketing function at the same level of importance to a board as a sailing trip around the Whitsundays or a short course on modern art. If I’m not mistaken, in reality marketing is as important to a board as breathing. There are no companies in the country who don’t depend on effective marketing for their very survival. No marketing, no sales, no money, no board.

But they don’t see it that way. They see it as one more (granted, usually entertaining) function on the way between the morning coffee and lunch at the club. Why is this? Boards in Australia are invariably stacked with eight accountants, one lawyer and one engineer, who probably founded the company. They are invariably over 50, most over 60. They are mostly white, middle class men. There is one woman on every five or six of them – you have to get lucky. There is a ‘professional’ marketer on fewer than one in 20. And I’m not saying he’s (sorry, but there are so few women, adding the ‘s’ is a waste of ink) a member of AMI or ASMI or ASMRS or even ADMA; he’s probably done a couple of weeks as a salesman while studying law, but he’s the only one in the gang who’s done any selling at all, so is considered the marketing expert.

Boards don’t care if you think this is silly or unfair; that it does not reflect the core dependence companies have on our profession. They are in the power position and you are not. Bad luck for you.

But here you are, month after month, needing to get the board’s approval for anything you want to do to further the company’s interests. Fail, and you end up doing sweet F all. Succeed in getting the budgets and you become a hero in marketing land and go on to have a shining career. It all comes down to your ability to convince a bunch of middle-aged men to allow you to do what you want.

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