Marketers learning to speak the language of the CFO has been a running theme in my cartoons over the years.
Even as marketing has become more data-driven, there’s still a gap between marketing and the rest of the organization.
Last year, Mastercard CMO Raja Rajamannar brought his CFO Sachin Mehra to the Cannes Lions to give a joint talk on the typical dysfunctional CMO/CFO relationship and how to bridge the gap.
This insight from Raja in particular resonated with me:
“It’s shocking that less than 40% of the finance people think that marketers can make sound commercial decisions…
“Many times we don’t do our own diligence properly as marketers. When we have been given the responsibility by the company, we have an accountability to demonstrate the results that we are driving.
“We need to connect the dots between marketing actions and business outcomes, not just in terms of marketing metrics. But we often don’t connect them because many times we don’t even care to measure.”
Connecting the dots between marketing actions and business outcomes is one of the most fundamental parts of the marketing job.
We miss an opportunity to impact the business when we focus too much on the comms, and not enough on the commercials.
Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:
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