Trinity P3 Developing Structures for Marketing Departments

marketing management consultants

Structural Options for Centralised Marketing��in a multi-brand / product organisation

Discussion Paper on Marketing Structure and Function

TrinityP3 March 31, 2011

COMMERCIAL IN CONFIDENCE


Overview • Many organisations will have multiple brands, multiple products or multiple business units to

market. In each case there are a number of strategic structures for providing marketing in these situations including:

• Decentralised Supplier • Centralised Supplier* • Marketing Partner* • Marketing Leadership*

• In the centralised models*, no matter what the strategic positioning, there are a number of considerations in how this centralised marketing function is structured.

• This document outlines the considerations that need to be discussed when developing the centralised marketing structure. These are:

• Brand strategy and audience commonality or diversity • Opportunities for economies of scale and security requirements • Size and number of resources within the marketing function

• Review of each of these considerations with the relevant senior and marketing management within the organisation can assist in developing the best fit model for any set of circumstances.


The Strategy & Requirement Matrix • The centralised marketing model allows

for a high level of co-ordination and control. But this must be balanced with delivering the specific requirements of the individual brands / products / business units, (BPBU).

• The Matrix allows you to review and define the specific strategic requirements of each BPBU and then identify the common requirements across the portfolio.

• These requirements are functional such as: Research, Strategy, Media, Database, Sponsorship, Print Management, Mail House Management, etc

• The next stage is to identify those areas that collectively provide the greatest efficiency in cost and resource use without compromising the individual strategic requirement of the BPBU.

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Strategies & Audience • Is the marketing department managing a

Branded House or a House of Brands? Is there multiple competitive brands or one brand with multiple offerings?

• A Branded House justifies sharing as many functions across the various brands as possible to identify and realise all of the economies of scale and to maximise the total brand effectiveness.

• If the Branded House has very different Target Audiences by BPBU, then the economies of scale across the marketing function are often diminished.

• A House of Brands requires identifying brands within the portfolio that directly compete. With these you need to ensure they have their own distinct strategies and possibly only share resources and realise economies in the implementation.

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Economies & Security • Review the functional requirements of

the BPBUs within marketing to identify those functions which have:

• Significant budget investment – eg. Research, Media, Publishing

• Require significant resources • Security considerations – eg.

Customer data, Financial reporting

• The structure of the matrix needs to balance the needs of the individual BPBUs with the advantages delivered from all of business management.

• Savings in major common cost centers like media, publishing are quantifiable.

• Savings in shared requirements such as research, sponsorship are dependent on the commonality requirement.

• Security depends on risk / reward of central control versus individual requirements.

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Resource Size & Specialties • For each BPBU the spend and resource

requirement needs to be defined by function. You can then begin allocating existing resources against the roles based on skills, expertise and seniority.

• There will be resources allocated specifically against the individual BPBU and shared resources allocated against specific shared functions.

• Depending on the size of the marketing team and the resources required, in smaller teams, some resources may have multiple responsibilities:

• Primary to their BPBU. • Secondary to the shared functionality.

• In some cases the marketing team allocates a resource / team to manage all shared functionality.

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Process Steps • The steps for determining the the best structure for managing a centralised marketing

function are: • Define the various brands / productions / business units (BPBU) within the central

marketing function. • Against each BPBU allocate the strategic requirements – (audience, positioning,

channel strategy) and functional requirements (budget, broken down by media, database, publishing, research, etc).

• Identify the common requirements for consolidation and cross-BPBU management, to deliver economies of scale, and areas where individual requirements are maintained.

• Review the size and budget of each BPBU to determine the level of dedicated resources within each.

• Review the size of the cross-BPBU requirement/spend to determine if dedicated resources are justified and determine the level of resourcing, i.e. what percentage resource level and skill is required in each BPBU based on requirement?

• Balance the resource allocation to support requirements of individual BPBU and the need for cross BPBU management, i.e. what percentage specialist resource is required across all BPBU in, say, database management and can this be consolidated?

• Plan the available resources against the matrix of requirements to identify gaps in resource levels, skills and capabilities.


For further information regarding��this process contact…

TrinityP3 Pty Ltd Sydney

+612 8399 0922 Melbourne

+613 9682 6800 Hong Kong

+852 3589 3095 Singapore

+65 6884 9149

[email protected] www.trinityp3.com

TrinityP3’s liability is limited as per our standard terms and condition as approved by the client prior to the project commencing

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Trinity P3 Developing Structures for Marketing Departments