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Case Study

Royal DSM (B): The challenge of establishing the corporate marketing function

By Wolfgang Ulaga and Athanasios Kondis

4 pages

April 2015

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Reference: IMD-7-1647

This three-part case series examines the change management challenge of putting corporate marketing at the top of the corporate executive suite (C-suite) agenda in a business-to-business (B2B) multinational. It follows the four-year journey, from 2010 to 2014, of Mauricio Adade, the newly appointed chief marketing officer (CMO) of Royal DSM – a global leader in life sciences and material sciences headquartered in the Netherlands. The case series, together with the video supplement, delves into the issues faced by the company’s top leadership, including Adade, in its effort to transform a diversified industrial company into an organization with best-in-class marketing and sales capabilities. Case B focuses on the implementation journey during the period 2011–2014. Adade and his team adopted a new plan of action and positioned the corporate marketing department as a partner that worked with the business groups to deliver projects with quantifiable results. Did the new strategy work?

Learning Objective

What triggers the need in a B2B company to build best-in-class marketing capabilities at the corporate (headquarters) level?
How can a CMO successfully drive change and overcome the legacy of a product-focused and highly decentralized organization?
What are the different roles and responsibilities of the corporate marketing function in an industrial B2B company?

Keywords

Marketing, Chief Marketing Officer, Corporate Marketing, Business to Business, Capability, Change Management, Materials Science, Life Science, Engineered Material

Settings

World/global, Netherlands
Dutch State Mines, Materials, Manufacturing, Chemicals
2010-2014

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

Related material

Teaching note, Video

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Reference IMD-7-2604

Organization On

Industry Consumer Goods, Sports Footwear

Available Languages English

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