How boards can help
Here are five ways boards can step up to enhance their oversight of marketing:
1. Align marketing with strategy: objectives and reviews
Ensure that marketing strategies align with the company’s strategic objectives and values. Encourage management to provide transparent, honest, and regular marketing updates that allow the board to ensure marketing remains on track and in keeping with the company’s vision and goals.
2. Embrace data and analytics: dashboards and decisions
Use tools like dashboards to monitor data on marketing performance against KPIs and campaign objectives. Benchmark marketing performance against industry standards and best practice. Champion the internal use of data and analytics to inform marketing decisions, leaning into the opportunities offered by generative AI to rewire internally for a more unified view across disparate systems and platforms.
3. Manage the risks: identify, mitigate, and plan
Routinely assess the risks related to marketing campaigns, from reputation to regulation, and seek to actively mitigate and manage these risks. Crisis management plans should be in place to respond to negative publicity or other consequences. In the event of a crisis, as a board member, you should know the protocol for how the board will be contacted and when and which board members will be involved.
4. Advocate for ethical practices: standards and accessibility
Boards should clearly signal their commitment for marketing to meet ethical standards. Additionally, more and more brands are committing to making their advertising accessible to everyone, whether it’s consumers with visual or hearing impairments, motor accessibility, and/or cognition challenges. Ensuring ads are accessible to all is not only an opportunity for brands to amplify their reach but also to reinforce brand values centered around empathy and social responsibility.
5. Seek out stakeholder views: external and internal
Board members should also consider the appropriate way to ensure they maintain healthy communication with, and get to hear the perspective of, stakeholders including customers, investors, and employees, to keep their fingers on the pulse. Many companies have regular external stakeholder council meetings which board members can attend. At Media Trust, a big part of our work is connecting organizations with civil society groups to exchange insights and foster meaningful allyship. Depending on the strength of stakeholder feedback, boards should be prepared to challenge marketing strategies.
For too long, marketing has been seen as beneath the remit of many corporate boards. However, in light of some very public marketing disasters and the heightened risk to brand value, reputation, and sales, it is time for board members to step up. By embracing a structured, informed, and thoughtful approach to oversight, boards can help to optimize the positive impact of marketing strategies while negating or – at least – reducing the fallout from campaigns that slip up.