‘Everyone’s got an opinion’: Cautionary tales from the budgeting and planning frontline

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If any proverb could sum up budgeting and planning season, it might be ‘The best laid plans of mice and men…’ Love it or hate it, for those marketers involved, this time of year is pivotal.

But it doesn’t always go to plan. With this in mind, Marketing Week spoke with a range of marketing leaders with several budget presentations behind them to hear their cautionary tales, and what they learned.

Marketers may arm themselves with evidence, theory and practice whether that’s Binet and Field’s 60/40 rule, Mark Ritson’s ‘Triple Cooked Chips’ approach or the wise words of Dr Grace Kite. However, according to Gareth Turner, who was head of marketing at Weetabix before setting up his agency Big Black Door, “the reality is nothing is ever 100% right”.

Three data-led pointers for marketers during budget seasonInstead, marketers should take bits from all, but ultimately, “go with their gut”.

“Budgeting is the moment to express your strategy in real life,” adds Cheryl Calverley, former Eve Sleep CMO turned CEO. “It should be exciting. It should be the bits of the puzzle falling into place, and it shouldn’t be the afterthought after you’ve had the fun bit of strategising.”

Below, Calverley, Turner, as well as former Admiral marketing director, Alex Murphy, Burger King’s former head of marketing, Abigail Dixon and Aviva’s former brand lead, Jan Gooding shed light on the trials and tribulations they have experienced during budgeting.

Cheryl Calverley, former CEO, Eve Sleep

Honesty and transparency can get you a long way. That’s according to Cheryl Calverley, former CEO and CMO of Eve Sleep. Her biggest piece of advice for marketers going through the budgeting period? “Understand what the finance team’s priorities are, because they are just as important as you are in the business, if not more.”

Be clear from the start

“We had an all day briefing session with the agency, 50 people in the room, cracking brief and they came back with some cracking work.

“And when we got into making the work, I realised the way I’d written the budget on the brief – and at this point, we were four months in – between us we had missed at least a quarter of a million pounds, if not more, in fees that needed to be paid.

“We both had to go crawling to our respective finance directors to try and find a way to solve it. Make sure everyone is clear on the allotted budget, and everyone knows the budget, at the beginning.”

“Throughout my career, all budgets have been built excluding VAT. But at the AA, which works across different categories with different VAT rates, it gets quite complex.

“So I built an entire budget, the whole budget, out by nearly 20%. And then, translating into different currencies, I couldn’t afford to do what we thought we could do. So definitely check that!”

Alex Murphy, former marketing director, Admiral

Does the finance team care about Binet and Field? Probably not, according to Alex Murphy, former marketing director at Admiral and founder of marketing agency Balance, who learnt the hard way. He tells Marketing Week how while the theory is useful, the CFO simply might not care.

Make sure you have a strong argument

“Talking to your finance director about Ritson’s Triple Cooked Chips or Ehrenberg-Bass is a bit like going to a meat eater and trying to get him to quit eating steak based on vegan options.

“When I was at GoCompare, I was working on a monthly level rationalising budget dynamic, and I was using attribution modelling. The model was telling me the results were really good. We were getting a decent ROI, but we were spending a lot of money on this thing.

“I went to finance to sort out my marketing mix for the next month, and said to the finance manager: ‘This is working really well – here are the charts’. He looked and asked: ‘How much did you invest in it?’ I told him we spent £100,000 last month. He asked how long it takes the customer between seeing and buying, and I told him 30 days.

“So are we up £100,000 in 30 day?” he asked. I had to say no.

“’It hasn’t worked then’,” he said.

“You can get so wrapped up in your own theory. I have sat in front of the CFO, delivered an absolutely perfect presentation, argument, theory, spoken about Binet and Field and elasticity, how it’s improved – everything, and the CFO is sat there nodding, saying they understand why we need to be doing what I’m suggesting.

“I was ecstatic. And then, I didn’t get the budget. The main reason? My argument was just not as strong as someone else’s.”

Abigail Dixon, former head of marketing, Burger King

Abigail Dixon, founder of The Whole Marketer and former head of marketing at Burger King, has worked in a range large marketing organisations, and now trains marketers in budgeting and planning too. One of the common pitfalls she sees is marketers not thinking broadly enough. Whether that’s not looking closely enough at current market trends, or what is happening beyond their industry and in adjacent markets, she says marketers should be really thinking about what world their consumer is operating in.

Know your organisation

“Every organisation has its own process. Having worked in many, from very innovation led businesses to ones where the kick-off of planning is putting numbers in a spreadsheet, or ones that are much more consumer focused.

“The approach a business takes is very much fuelled by whether it’s consumer focused or not, and the culture. For me, those where I felt supported, and was supported by the insight and data to understand the macro trends, competition and consumer, were the most productive.

“The most supportive senior marketers made sure I wasn’t jumping from the audit to the tactics. They made sure I was taking a step back. I felt most supported when there was a more senior person acting as a sounding board.

“We also need to move towards long-term planning. But when a long-term strategy is written, it should be written for the long term. In the last few years, because of the changes we’ve seen in economic climates, Brexit, a lack of confidence, Covid-19, and marketers not feeling confident to be able to predict longer term, there has been a lot more focus on the coming year.

“But before this, we were starting to see a trend towards longer-term planning. And that’s what we need to move to, because the energy that goes into each budget means it shouldn’t be ripped up and started again.”

Jan Gooding, former global inclusion director, Aviva

Many marketers may dread the budgeting and planning season, and the long days – and nights – that come with it. However, for Jan Gooding, who has led marketing at the likes of Aviva, British Gas and BT, it was a time of year she looked forward to. “I was in the position of being very influential both in supporting and critiquing other people’s plans,” she tells Marketing Week. “So I would say it was a time of year that I loved, and then going into battle with the various stakeholders and thinking about the impact of your plans.”

Every part of the business needs to know the plan

“I remember a real awakening when a function of BT did a campaign for a product they were launching online. You could only buy it online, and it was costed into the budget as a pure play online product.

“But customers saw the ads, and rang the call centre instead. But it was all meant to be digital. The ad didn’t tell them what they needed to know, and a great number of customers reacted to the campaign by ringing in. The managing director of the call centre was furious.

“That’s why visibility of what you’re doing is important, because you might not realise that what you’re doing has an impact somewhere else in the organisation.

“You need to know what other teams are up to.”

Gareth Turner, former head of marketing, Weetabix

If you’re lucky, your marketing budget might only get cut back once or twice in your career. “It wouldn’t be unusual for a brand to say, ‘Yeah, you haven’t quite got what you thought,” says Gareth Turner. As the former Weetabix and Arla marketer explains, marketers can waste a lot of emotional energy fighting when plans don’t work out. “You can make your case, but ultimately, someone’s going to make a decision and it will either go for or against you.”

The wisdom of crowds

“My biggest learning is about the wisdom of crowds. At Arla, we had a leadership professor come in from Insead Business School, and it was brilliant.

“He did this whole session about how in leadership teams, you need everyone’s opinion. There was 50 of us, and he got us all to try and guess the number of sweets in a big jar.

“The gag was that the average of all our guesses was the nearest, and that’s because it contributed everyone’s opinion. That’s the wisdom of crowds. An important thing in budget setting and planning is to get everyone’s opinion, whether it’s sales, manufacturing, finance – whatever it might be.

“Everyone’s got an opinion on marketing, even people who are not qualified. I wouldn’t say to a company lawyer, ‘I’ve just got a couple of bits of feedback on that contract’, but they would feel absolutely qualified to give you feedback on a brand plan.

“The lightbulb moment for me is that you can’t do it on your own. You need to collaborate.”



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