When developing a marketing excellence program, it's easy to get tunnel vision. After all, the point is to give your marketing team everything they need to deliver the best job possible, right?
But Natalie Howell, director of marketing excellence at pasta company Barilla, believes taking a siled approach is a mistake. Instead, she argues, everything needs to connect to a “bigger picture.”
“Marketing excellence cannot exist on its own. It must exist as part of a broader vision and mission,” Howell explains. “We need to look at commercial excellence more broadly.”
Although considered a somewhat niche brand in the UK, where shoppers tend to opt for private-label alternatives, Barilla is Italy's number one pasta brand, with sales of €4 billion ($3.4 billion). It is the world's largest pasta producer. The multinational organization is currently in the midst of a business-wide transformation, including a new focus on marketing excellence.
It's not enough for one department within a business to have its own language and be great at it. You have to bring others along as well.
Natalie Howell, Barilla
Ilaria Rodigiani, head of category and marketing, said the plan is a “solid foundation” that will allow Barilla to adapt to today's fast-changing marketing environment and become “more agile” in mastering new technologies and media. ” is to be established.
“Adopting a unified approach to commercial excellence is key to Barilla's growth. This provides a common language, strengthens collaboration and ensures we all strive for a common view of success.” “We will be able to ensure that we are able to address this issue,” says Rodigiani.
As such, Howell was appointed Barilla's first Director of Marketing Excellence in 2022. Initially, Howell was hired in a specific marketing function role a year in advance of his, but he quickly realized that his work had to be tied to his team's broader marketing mission. Ta.
She was promoted and took on additional responsibility for creating and deploying new frameworks and processes for how Barilla markets.
Science with “furikake” on top
Echoing Rodigiani, Howell says marketing excellence at Barilla is about finding a common language, sharing success metrics and uniting teams. That need has become even more pronounced as organizations grow globally, with marketers spanning different disciplines, products, and geographies.
Excellence also means enabling Barilla's marketing to evolve with current and future conditions, and includes being more data-driven in its overall approach, she added.
“In many ways, the fundamentals of marketing have remained the same: strategy, goals, and the need for strong brand positioning and measurement. But the tactics we use today have evolved,” Howell says. explains.
“For me, excellence in marketing means making sure you have a very clear foundation in marketing science and best practices, and then building on that to excel in today's complex, busy and dynamic environment. It means sprinkling in fresh perspectives on what is needed.”
Marketing excellence cannot exist by itself. It needs to exist as part of a broader vision and mission.
Natalie Howell, Barilla
Most importantly, she added, excellence is about building on the big picture and ambitions of your business. So when planning a great marketing effort, Howell says it's important to “begin with the end in mind.”
“For us, that means the mission, vision and goals of the business. What does marketing need to do and function as a team to get there? And how can we support teams and individuals to excel?” she explains.
Initially, these questions remained unanswered as Barilla was transforming its entire business. While the company was setting its overall direction, Mr. Howell worked to achieve “quick wins” in areas where Barilla's marketing team needed immediate support.
For example, Howell developed the organization's storytelling principles and is leading their rollout across Barilla's marketing community. She claims that she is already seeing “significant traction” from this, as observed through improved delivery of messages and presentations. However, these quick wins are not enough.
“It's not enough for one department within a business to have its own language and be great at it – you need to get all the other departments to follow suit, particularly sales and commercial and finance teams,” says Howell.
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Now that Barilla has a clear direction for the future, Howell can be “very specific” about the role that marketing excellence will play. The company has laid out a marketing philosophy, a new framework and a vision for its marketing capabilities, which he says have been “very well-received” so far.
With that infrastructure in place, Howell said the focus now is on rolling it out within all of Barilla's markets and training and competency programs to help these new frameworks and processes become “business as usual.” states that it is to introduce. Importantly, this means providing on-the-ground support to corporate marketers.
“It’s not just about telling them.” [marketing excellence] And then we give them a glorious training session, but we allow them to actually put it into practice and benefit from it,” Howell explains.
Does excellence need to be formalized?
Marketing excellence appears to have become an increasing priority for many companies over the past few years, and a quick search on LinkedIn reveals that there are roughly 217,000 people who have marketing excellence in their job title or job description.
Some may wonder whether there is a need to focus on formal marketing excellence. Howell argues that this is absolutely true for companies of a certain size.
“If the right culture exists, people will naturally develop their own curiosity and inspiration. But I believe that some rigor is necessary,” she explains.
“Not because everyone gets carried away and does bad things, but because they do things a little differently. They may write from a slightly different position, or use different terminology for the same thing. On a smaller scale. That's fine when you're agile and entrepreneurial, but as you grow, it becomes more complex.”
Howell believes that implementing a marketing excellence program can also help large organizations leverage their scale.
“We have offices in multiple markets, and there are great opportunities to share, learn, and reapply,” she adds.
“If you want to leverage that to accelerate and operate like a global company, have a common way of measuring success, understanding overview and positioning, and writing strategy. That will only help you become faster and more powerful.”
