If you're not busy growing, you're busy dying

A new ANA/Booz Allen study reveals the following:

Marketing organizations that take advanced roles in their companies and lead such non-traditional activities as innovation and strategy contribute to superior corporate performance. The study found that marketing organizations can be classified into six basic categories - but only one category correlates with better performance: "Growth Champions." Marketing departments in this category are 20% more likely to exhibit superior revenue growth and profitability than those in the other five categories. However, only 9% of marketers fell under the Growth Champion category.

What's wrong with Marketing?

First of all, why is innovation and strategy classified as non-traditional?

Secondly, follow the logic...if marketing departments that fall into the "Growth Champion" category are 20% more likely to exhibit superior revenue growth and profitability, why the hell do only 9% of marketers fall into this category?

For your information, here is the breakdown:

• Growth Champions (9%): The Influentials...
• Marketing Masters (38%): Bubbling under...close second; arguably less accountable?
• Senior Counselors (17%): Academics/Good at talking and coming up with charts
• Best Practices Advisors (9%): Me-toos/sheep
• Brand Builders (12%): The Ad Guys/Love going to the Super Bowl
• Service Providers (15%): Lackeys.

  So I applied a tad of Jaffe Juice irreverence, but there are some common threads or trends. One continuum is ideation to execution; another is innovation; a third is the coverage - and influence - throughout the organization (the opposite of a silo approach); a final one is the ability to try out new approaches (versus status quo/best practices)