In brainstorming with some friends and colleagues (including my partner Lois) on the future of marketing, and indirectly during conversations and presentations at the Conference Board meeting on Marketing Effectiveness (with other posts on the conference here and here), the question came up of what the role of a corporate marketer should be in a large multi-brand company.

What do you do when you are not directly connected with the product, the brand or the revenue? Think GE and NBC, Disney and ESPN, Pepsi and Gatorade, or Eli Lilly and Cialis. As long as the business units are doing well, there may be very little perceived value in what corporate marketing has to offer to the business units. In some cases you may wonder what brand people are actually buying – are they buying an NBC product, or are they buying a specific show? It is clear that the GE brand does not affect buying behavior – but does the NBC brand actually influence a show’s buying behavior?

Regardless of whether NBC or the NBC shows are the main brands, how does the corporate marketing group at GE proves its value to the subsidiaries in such a way that it can be impactful? (And note that I am using GE as a fictitious example – I have no idea whether there are frictions or any such problems as described here between corporate marketing and the subsidiaries.) One way could be by accepting that the only role they can play is an advisory role – and then strengthen that position. They could surround themselves with a center of excellence in marketing and then share the acquired knowledge with marketers in the subs, who probably do not have enough time for thought leadership and education. Another could be for them to become a friend/ally with the local marketing departments to make sure that they do not get marginalized into a tactical position, but that they instead get a key strategic seat at the executive table which marketers should occupy at any company. Remember Peter Drucker’s saying - “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

In some companies the marketing role of the parent company is important. In the case of Eli Lilly for example, which presented at the Conference Board meeting yesterday, the two key brand-attributes for doctors, their “primary buyers” as prescribers at this point, are – do they trust the product/drug and do they trust the company it is coming from. So if corporate marketing does not deliver, and doctors lose their trust in the company, then the brands could have to spend up to 4 times as much as competitors to gain the same number of market share points. In this case the role of corporate marketing is self-evident. Now when the inevitable shift toward consumer-driven drug selection comes, that whole picture may very well change. Individual consumers may base their decisions on the trust they have in the product and the trust they have in the community which recommended it to them – so in effect diminishing the role of the trust they have in the company, and thus that of corporate marketing.

So is bigger better?