Ah, the sweet smell of redemption on a Thursday morning. Last week, I wrote about whether executives could tag companies as ‘innovative’ if they failed to deliver revenue growth (and implicitly, fail to meet customer needs). BCG’s listing of the top 50 innovative companies said yea; I, nay. And this week, I think I’ve got 23 companies to back me up: Fortune’s list of 23 companies that achieved double-digit revenue growth despite the turbulent economy in 2009. Perhaps not innovative, but doing a great job of exceeding shareholder expectations.
Discerning a common thread among those on the Fortune list isn’t easy, especially since most would rarely appear on an ‘innovative company’ list. You could certainly argue that value positioning helped tremendously, i.e., the right economic proposition to capitalize on retrenched consumer spending. Companies like Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Ross Stores certainly fit the bill. Yet, there are plenty of ‘value’ retailers that noticeably didn’t make the cut, from Family Dollar to the granddaddy of them all, Walmart. There isn’t an easy industry lens to the list either – in what was generally another poor year for financial services, USAA, Wells Fargo, and Erie Insurance beat the odds handily. Even with oil prices up across 2009, there isn’t an energy company to be found.
There must be something all these companies are doing right. Judging from those on the list that are members of the Marketing Leadership Council, I can say with certainty that part of the secret sauce is marketing-led customer centricity. Marketing doesn’t play a bit part in corporate strategy; it leads it. The customer isn’t an afterthought in marketing planning; it is the plan’s foundation. Brand positioning doesn’t waver; it remains crystal clear, enabling the customer to know with precision the value they will receive. Customer loyalty isn’t another consulting catchphrase; it’s pursued with intensity.
So in dueling lists, we have shrinking companies that are considered innovative and rapidly growing companies that some consider formulaic. Maybe it’s just a matter of semantics. But to parrot the Council’s own jobs/outcomes phrasing, the fundamental questions are these: first, what is the core task that we as marketers seek to accomplish? And second, what outcomes will tell us whether we have achieved success?
To my mind, our core task is to satisfy unmet customer needs through the right product and service offering. We’ll know success when customers not just purchase, but repurchase and advocate for our brands – which our CFO happily measures as increased revenue and profit. Sign me up as an advocate of revenue growth over innovation, muddily defined, any day of the week.
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