Marketing in the Boardroom Winning the Hearts and Minds of the Board

It’s no secret: marketing punches below its weight in the Boardroom. CEOs and other board members perceive that marketers lack commercial credibility when compared to their peers. Marketing in the Boardroom helps marketers to be more commercially credible and thereby more successful in the Boardroom. Ruth Saunders explains the importance of marketing in the Boardroom, and why marketers often struggle to engage the Board. She then shows how to develop compelling marketing strategies that the Board will buy into, offering a mix of practical solutions and varied case studies drawn from her years of industry experience. In the final section, she helps marketers better understand the Board mindset and language, demonstrating how to win over the Board members’ hearts, minds and confidence. Marketing in the Boardroom is an important book for any aspiring marketers who are moving up the career ladder, particularly those who are writing or giving presentations to the Board. It is also an important book for their organizations, particularly those that struggle to give marketing the support it needs to create customer-led strategies that will drive business growth.

Introduction Overview Part one: the importance of marketing in the boardroom 1. The marketing issue 2. The ideal marketer 3. Creating the ideal marketing team Part two: creating marketing strategies that the board will buy Overview 4. Choosing who to target 5. Choosing what to support 6. Choosing why to be in business 7. Choosing where to market 8. Choosing when to engage people Part three: getting the board on-board Overview 9. Winning the board members’ minds 10. Winning the board members ‘hearts 11. Winning the board members’ confidence

Ruth Saunders is a joint founder and leading partner of Galleon Blue – a consultancy that merges commercial thinking with marketing and branding to help companies maximise the value and return of their brands. Ruth Saunders uses her years of experience as a strategy consultant, marketer, advertising planner and market researcher to help clients develop, get Board buy-in to and implement innovative marketing strategies that deliver tangible business growth. Her work includes developing commercially actionable customer segmentations, developing innovative brands from scratch, creating new brand positionings for growth, building strong global brands, streamlining brand portfolios and architectures, conducting brand migrations, optimising the customer and brand experience and increasing marketing spend effectiveness. She is also a trainer, speaker and coach. Prior to setting up Galleon Blue, Ruth was a• Marketing and branding consultant at McKinsey & Co and Prophet • Strategic advertising planner with Saatchi & Saatchi and Mustoes• Marketer and Market Researcher with packaged goods companies, Procter & Gamble and Mars Inc.• Graduate from Birmingham University, with a Batchelor’s Degree in Statistics, followed by a post-graduate Diploma in Marketing.