Marketing is becoming fun again. Having been reduced to tasks of project management and numbers crunching, marketing is about to be released to exercise the strategic thinking and creativity that makes it such an attractive discipline for great minds.
 A systemic, scientific, data-grounded approach to marketing -- Enterprise Marketing Management -- is at the center of this new day for marketers, which is bathed in four great beams of massive change:
Metrics. CEOs and CFOs are insisting on the application of metrics to marketing. The greatest influence on the spread of Enterprise Marketing Management through the Global 2000 is the emerging insistence by CEOs and CFOs that marketing be subject to the same disciplines of measurement as the rest of the corporation. Marketing's ability to survive (and maintain its funding) as an art -- and therefore not measurable -- will not hold.
Best Practices. Chief Marketing Officers --CMOs -- are moving quickly to codify key practices within the overall marketing process. Metrics can't be applied until processes are codified. Marketing is making rapid strides away from its status as the least codified of the enterprise processes.
CFOs have long employed metrics of "numbers of processes codified" to measure progress towards business efficiency, because they know that a process can't be re-engineered and made more effective until it is first codified.
CMOs have resisted this trend, however now we observe process maps being drawn, best practices identified and codifications of process issued so that different individuals, business units and countries can at least be brought to the point of awareness of best practice.
Technologies. Dependable IT systems are emerging to support the Enterprise Marketing Management trend. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the first attempts at developing software to support marketing processes began to appear. Some of these technologies were narrowly focused -- at the department or function level -- while a few brave pioneers attempted to address the end-to-end marketing process.
Today, those pioneers are being replaced in the Enterprise Marketing Management field by major enterprise application vendors. Enterprise Marketing Management technologies are being built using components from the strategic vendors who also supply ERP, CRM and other enterprise applications, thereby ensuring industrial-strength reliability and compatibility. Integration into corporate databases, financials and supply chain is becoming easier and less costly.
CMOs might still be the best creative marketers in the corporation, but they'll also become much, much more.
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Systems. CIOs who, until recently, had not been prepared to support another department, are now driving the rapid integration of the marketing function into the corporate system. Within the last year, large corporations -- especially the marketing-intensive group -- deployed task forces or committees, initiated pilots or launched small modules with the potential to become part of a larger Enterprise Marketing Management system.
Typical examples included Digital Asset Management systems, coupled with collaborative project management systems, which could support several marketing processes on the same platform. As 2003 begins, the transition is moving into to the next stage -- the launching of genuine Enterprise Marketing Management systems -- with full financial, technical and organizational commitment from the top to the bottom of the enterprise.
From these starting points, here's how Enterprise Marketing Management will change the business of marketing over the next half-decade:
Brands will drive growth. CEOs and corporate strategists have been successful in squeezing most of the effectiveness and efficiency gains they can out of ERP systems, supply chain management, financial management, customer-facing systems and sales force automation. Where can they turn to drive top-line revenue and bottom-line growth? To the one place that offers open-ended growth potential – their brands.
Brand strength will be linked more and more directly to EVA and shareholder value. Returns on marketing investments will be measured with increasing accuracy. Models for resource allocation will become more and more precise. The marketing department will become a focus of advanced metrics.
CMOs will drive value creation. The CMO position will become the critical position supporting the CEO -- the office the CEO turns to in order to ensure delivery of the value creation goals set by the board, shareholders and Wall Street. The CMOs of tomorrow will command the drivers of shareholder value and understand the linkages. Their job performance will be measured primarily in these terms rather than via creative awards or recognition for spearheading great communications campaigns. CMOs might still be the best creative marketers in corporation, but they'll also become much, much more.
CMOs will ally with CIOs. Together, the CMO and CIO will form a new axis of excellence. The great advances in corporate capability are achieved as a result of an alliance between the responsible functional executive and the CIO. One brings the vision of what the functional area can achieve with the application of best practices, and the other brings the enabling capabilities of technology. The same will be true of Enterprise Marketing Management.
Together, the CMO and CIO will form a new axis of excellence.
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IT providers will discover marketing. CIOs will find that their traditional partners -- the big technology suppliers -- are right there with them. The big software and systems vendors are discovering marketing and will quickly deploy powerful platforms and systems in support of the new corporate marketing mandate.
The entrepreneurial software companies who pioneered CRM and other allied fields will be eclipsed by the traditional enterprise software houses. CIOs will be able to count on their traditional allies, and CMOs will be pleased by these software companies' abilities to listen to the CMO's lead.
Marketing will become fun again. Fifty years ago, marketing was able to recruit the best and brightest from the top schools. Over time, law, consulting, investment banking and entrepreneurship usurped that position. Now, the best and the brightest will come back to marketing. They will see it as the most important function in the enterprise, they will celebrate the application of cutting edge technology and tools, and they will see marketing as the best route to the very top of the corporation.
Yes, indeed, it is morning in marketing. 
Hunter Hastings is managing partner of EMM Consulting Group, which advises companies on how to implement Enterprise Marketing Management, a multi-faceted system for global brand management combining marketing knowledge, best practice processes and training with collaborative software, marketing tools and infrastructure. He can be reached at HunterHastings@EMMConsulting.net
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