BREAKING DOWN
MARKETING SILOS
THE KEY TO CONSISTENTLY ACHIEVING CUSTOMER
SATISFACTION AND IMPROVING YOUR BOTTOM LINE
IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
CONTENTS
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INTRODUCTION:
CONDUCTING A SYMPHONY, NOT A CACOPHONY
Kelly Davis-Felner has an apt metaphor for her job as the chief marketing officer of the Wi-Fi Alliance: a
conductor. “In an environment where I am overseeing over 600 member companies, I have to make sure
that all the violins are playing together, so they sound like a symphony, not a cacophony,” says DavisFelner, whose non-profit organization includes such technology giants as Apple and Samsung. The point
of having someone in her role, she says, “is to ensure everyone is marching to the same drummer.”
Regardless of whether you oversee the marketing depart-
and other departments—are the scourge of many marketing
ment of a global non-profit, a Fortune 500 or a small startup,
departments. Marketing departments, by nature, are very
the image of a conductor is spot on. Today’s CMO—or
segmented, with corporate and internal communications,
anyone, for that matter, in a leadership position in a B2B
most of which involve outside agencies. Additionally, the
or B2C marketing department—is coordinating many
advertising and digital teams support internal departments
parts of a team, making sure all the parts work together in
as well as working with an agency partner. In short, market-
their distinct roles. To do that, however, CMOs have to
ing departments are prime candidates for silos. These silos
vigilantly avoid the silo effect. This dreaded unintended
not only chip away at employee morale and create inter-
consequence of organizational rigidity or negligent man-
office tension, they also undermine customer satisfaction,
agement prevents the organization’s functional teams from
reduce efficiency, significantly increase cost and overall will
cooperating. Silos—both within and between marketing
erode the bottom line.
6
THE SIX CHALLENGES WITH SILOS
1. Each silo may have its own brand vision, creating a disjointed experience and message for the
customer.
2. Team incentives may motivate some team members to exploit and damage the brand in order to
boost short-term sales.
3. Poorly integrated teams suffer from inadequate cooperation.
4. Silo interests stand in the way of programs that require scaling.
5. Key growth areas such as digital are not scaled because they are dispersed across silos.
6. Success in one silo is leveraged slowly into others, or not at all.
The good news is that silos are not an impervious or
To gain a better understanding of marketing silos and
intractable problem. Silos, as you’ll see in this report, can
their impacts on the customer and company, Teradata,
be broken down, bringing great benefits to the company,
in collaboration with Forbes Insights, set out to explore
to marketing and—most significantly—to the customer.
some key questions: Do silos trickle down from the top?
How can CMOs resist the silo effect, particularly in an
2 | BREAKING DOWN MARKETING SILOS
environment where everyone is competing fiercely
The challenge, then, for CMOs is twofold: assessing the silo
for a piece of the marketing budget? And how can
problem (searching for clues both in corporate operations
the 21st century CMO create a cohesive, creative and
and in the customer experience), and coming up with solu-
streamlined marketing department that delivers a better
tions that help strengthen company culture and cohesion
product and message to the customer, leading to an ideal
as well as bringing benefits to the customer. This report
customer experience?
aims to be a blueprint—a roadmap even—for CMOs who
What’s clear, as marketing expert David Aaker points out,
is that silos aren’t just an internal problem that stays contained within a small swath of company culture; they can
want to build better-integrated marketing teams, increase
customer engagement and turn bigger profits, but who find
that silos are a persistent, nagging barrier.
have a large impact on the customer experience. “When
Our insights in this report are drawn from five
P&G integrated systems across all its products with
leading CMOs, all of whom are at the helm of marketing
Wal-Mart, the result was a better relationship with
departments representing both B2B and B2C compa-
customers and huge cost savings,” recalls Aaker, author
nies. They come to the table with different backgrounds,
of Spanning Silos: The New CMO Imperative.
perspectives, challenges and solutions, but all have wrestled
with the silo problem.
r Brad Brooks, CMO, Juniper Networks. Juniper
Networks is a publicly traded software company that
Despite their detrimental effects, throughout the business world silos are pervasive. In its recent global study, the
“Teradata Data-Driven Marketing Survey 2013,” Teradata
found that silos are present in many of the areas CMOs
oversee, both within marketing departments and between
works across routing, switching and security.
r Steve Daheb, CMO, Citrix. Citrix is a publicly traded
IT company with more than 100 million users and
annual revenue in 2013 of $2.9 billion.
marketing and other core functions. According to Teradata,
r Kelly Davis-Felner, CMO, Wi-Fi Alliance. The
74% of marketers say that marketing and IT are not stra-
Wi-Fi Alliance is a global non-profit industry association
tegic partners in their company. “If you get more than
of 600+ members, including Apple, Comcast, Samsung
three marketing people in a room, you get silos,” says Brad
and Qualcomm.
Brooks, the CMO of Juniper Networks. As silos solidify,
Brooks says, your company starts to show up as disconnected in front of the customer. “You lose the connective
tissue, and customers pick up on things,” he says. Needless
to say, a disconnected marketing team and company creates
acute corporate image problems for brands when going to
market. And, being attuned to the customer base, CMOs
often have a window into the effects of silos on customers
before the rest of the C-suite even knows they exist.
r Scott Eagle, CMO, Conversant. Conversant is a publicly traded marketing company that has an average of
5 million sales transactions per day.
r Mike Volpe, CMO, HubSpot. HubSpot is a Bostonbased startup-marketing platform with some 10,000
customers and revenue of $77 million.
We’ll share their real-world perspectives, putting silos
in the context of everyday business problems and,
of course, solutions.
COPYRIGHT © 2014 FORBES INSIGHTS | 3
NEW GROUPS TO SPAN SILOS
When CMO Steve Daheb started at Citrix over a year ago, the company had a very common
structure: each product group, whether it was security or networking, had its own marketing
manager. “But there was a gap and lack of integration across all these product groups,” recalls Daheb.
So he created a new department—what he describes as an “overlay”—called Corporate Solutions and
Product Marketing. “It was about being greater than the sum of its parts. You need to have a point
where it all rolls up and is presented to the market in an integrated way.”
By creating this overlay team, Daheb was bringing a larger
So far, the results are showing. The Corporate Solutions
strategic vision to the company—the cornerstone of which
and Product Marketing team allows Citrix to take a more
was that Citrix wanted to have higher-level conversations
holistic approach that is resonating with customers. “Before
with customers. This approach came from Daheb’s observa-
we led with products,” says Daheb, “and now we are leading
tion that customers don’t think in terms of specific products
with solutions.” And customers, it seems, are responding:
but more in terms of how to solve big-picture problems.
Daheb cites greater ROI, pipeline growth and bigger deal
That’s why the Corporate Solutions and Product Marketing
sizes since the team—which has grown from six people to
group serves as a strategic advisor, helping customers think
over 30 in the past year—was created.
about their higher-level problems and pain points: How
do I enable a remote workforce? How do we enhance
off-site worker productivity? How can we promote remote
workforce inclusivity and cooperation? By creating more
cohesion among the departments with this new group,
Daheb says, he is constantly thinking: How do we collaborate with our teams in a way that ties it all together for
the customer?
In addition, Citrix recently consolidated its public
relations team so analyst relations and corporate relations
were speaking with one voice. As a result, the company has
been receiving coverage in higher-caliber publications.
Today Daheb says he doesn’t really see silos at Citrix. “I
see an interoperable ecosystem that can link to support any
major touch points.”
“Before we led with products,
and now we are leading with solutions.”
— Steve Daheb
&KLHI0DUNHWLQJ2IÀFHU
Citrix
4 | BREAKING DOWN MARKETING SILOS
LOSING CONSISTENCY OF MESSAGE
Until recently, Juniper Networks’ marketing operations were fractured into many different enclaves
and dispersed, all of them reporting to different department heads of corporate marketing, internal
communications, digital and product marketing, to name a few. With that structure, Brad Brooks,
Juniper’s CMO, found that the consistency of the company’s message was getting lost. So he took a
step back and had a conversation with executives at Juniper to think about how to break down the
silos and create a more unified message and configuration. Before he made any changes, Brooks
thought about and then outlined what makes the marketing function unique. Then he thought about
how he could leverage those unique functions to promote efficiency and better serve the customer.
5
FIVE INSIGHTS ON THE UNIQUENESS ON MARKETING
1. Marketing brings an outside point of view.
2. Marketing can articulate the unique truth of the company and what differentiates it within
the marketplace.
3. Marketing can communicate the product and value—why products are relevant to customers
in different ways, identifying segmentation in the market.
4. Marketing creates compelling stories for rallying employees and making an emotional
connection with customers.
5. Marketing is a strategic seat at the table; there is no other department that can see such a
company panorama and bring those perspectives together.
With those core characteristics in mind, Brooks restruc-
“Before the new chain of command was in place,” says
tured the marketing department, breaking up the silos.
Brooks, “it would have taken months to go up the approval
Before the restructuring, a product launch would origi-
chains of sales and accounts. Everyone would have to
nate with the product marketing team, which reported
debate it. Now the decision rolls up to one person. That’s
up through the business team, which in turn would work
what happens when you break down silos.”
with the web team, PR team and advertising team to
promote the launch. Now the whole department reports to
the CMO. The results, Brooks says, are tangible. Today the
mantra at Juniper is: “Let’s think about what the customer
experiences.”
“Is the customer going to be thinking about this through
a particular product?” says Brooks. “No. The customer is
going to be thinking, how does it help me solve a problem? It’s not about the product anymore; it’s about a specific
problem. The customers don’t care if there is a faster router
The new streamlined, less siloed department has also
that pushes more information; they just want to know how
radically improved efficiency—what used to take three to
it will solve a problem and help their business and their
six months to get done now takes six days. For instance,
customers. It’s about telling a story from that perspective,
when Juniper wanted to release some disruptive market-
the customer’s perspective.”
ing, the company was able to roll it out in less than a week.
COPYRIGHT © 2014 FORBES INSIGHTS | 5
BRIDGING
THE GAPS
The Wi-Fi Alliance, like many organizations, has offices all over the world, which poses another
challenge to integration: making sure teams that span many time zones and cultures collaborate.
Davis-Felner bumped up against this issue when the Wi-Fi Alliance was looking to elevate its social
media presence in China. The challenge was that the team in China consists of one person. DavisFelner noticed there wasn’t a lot of cross-pollination between the organization’s sole China employee
and the U.S. team. To build more collaboration, Davis-Felner realized a third party was necessary.
This new conduit couldn’t be just anyone; it had to be someone who could bridge the gap, someone
who had knowledge of both countries and teams. She found the ideal intermediary in a U.S.-based
employee with engineering experience who was also a Chinese national with knowledge of China.
Now, Davis-Felner says, there is more collaboration—and less siloing—as the organization works to
build a stronger social media presence in China.
“Now the decision rolls up to one person.
That’s what happens when you break down silos.”
— Brad Brooks
&KLHI0DUNHWLQJ2IÀFHU
Juniper Networks
6 | BREAKING DOWN MARKETING SILOS
BEING CUSTOMER-­CENTRIC
IS THE KEY
The publicly traded marketing company Conversant recently underwent a seismic merger. It brought
five companies under one umbrella brand, leaving the new CMO, Scott Eagle, with the challenge:
How do you break down allegiances to the disappearing brand? And how do you get people to collaborate with one another when many of those brands have traditionally competed with each other?
Eagle says that what has worked is making it about the customers, not the individual teams. “People
are very fact-driven,” he says. “So in every conversation we talk about, ‘How is this going to impact
our end consumer?’ You always have the conversation focused on that and employees tend to drop the
silo mentality.” There is a lesson, Eagle says: “While it’s natural to think about how this is going to
impact me personally or my group, when the culture of thinking forward about the consumer is ubiquitous, integration happens.”
With the new mandate to get more aligned and in touch
for Conversant. Now sales teams could go confidently to
with the customer, Conversant has seen some big changes.
clients and new business meetings as an integrated team of
Sales teams that may have competed against each other
five previously distinct companies and say: “We can help
now work more in tandem. “We needed to show the sales
you efficiently and effectively target your consumer at the
team that it was a win-win if they worked together, not
right moment across many web platforms. We can do this
a loss that business was being taken away from them,”
because we have not only brought together but assimi-
Eagle recalls. To make that case and get everyone on
lated our business intelligence team, data team, sales teams
board, Eagle had to outline the incentives and the big,
and various product teams into one well-oiled and inte-
strategic vision: having an integrated view of consumers,
grated company, one that could do more for you than five
across the web or on any device, was a key selling point
individual ones.”
“While it’s natural to think about how this is going to impact
me personally or my group, when the culture of thinking forward
about the consumer is ubiquitous, integration happens.”
— Scott Eagle
&KLHI0DUNHWLQJ2IÀFHU
Conversant
COPYRIGHT © 2014 FORBES INSIGHTS | 7
CHANGING
YOUR FOCUS
A few years ago HubSpot—a 650-employee, $77 million-revenue Boston-based company featuring
a marketing software platform that helps companies attract customers—took the pulse of its clients.
HubSpot found that a number of its customers were unhappy because they felt there was a big difference between what was promised to them and what was delivered, recalls Mike Volpe, the company’s
CMO, who has overseen growth from a handful of clients when the company was founded in 2006
to 10,000 today. Volpe, in collaboration with others in the C-suite, looked at those unhappy customers as an opportunity to refocus and reorganize the marketing department—and to break down silos.
Today at HubSpot the changes are visible. Marketers are
“We all have the experience where you deal with a big
not housed in a specific part of the building; they are inte-
company and the person on the phone doesn’t know you
grated with other departments. “We’ll have the sales and
emailed them two days ago, and you have to explain
customer service teams sit together,” says Volpe. “We
it all over again,” explains Volpe. HubSpot’s integrative
structure based on what stage of the customer lifecycle
approach is geared at rooting out that kind of cus-
each team is addressing, rather than touch points or chan-
tomer annoyance. So far, it’s working, says Volpe. “Our
nels. People sit according to different customers’ personas.”
customers’ satisfaction has increased a lot, our renewal rates
are up, and we are growing at a rate of 50%. I think the
customer experience you are having with HubSpot is a lot
less disjointed.”
“We structure based on what stage of the customer lifecycle each
team is addressing, rather than touch points or channels.”
— Mike Volpe
&KLHI0DUNHWLQJ2IÀFHU
HubSpot
8 | BREAKING DOWN MARKETING SILOS
USING DATA
AS A WEAPON
While it might not be as pronounced as it was five years ago, there is still a divide between digital and offline
in marketing departments. A zero-sum mentality often pervades: a dollar spent on your team is one less
spent on my team, creating barriers and competition between teams when they should be collaborating
and working towards the same common goal. Conversant’s Eagle believes successful CMOs find a way
to “float above” these divisions by bringing data to the discussion, and letting the data do the talking.
“I’m not going to make it about offline versus online,” he says. “I’m going to make it about
making the right decisions based on what the big picture of the data tells us. Data is our biggest weapon.
It aligns departments behind the right decisions, and CMOs are in a unique position to break down
silos with data.”
“Data is our biggest weapon.”
— Scott Eagle
&KLHI0DUNHWLQJ2IÀFHU
Conversant
COPYRIGHT © 2014 FORBES INSIGHTS | 9
SPANNING SILOS:
BEST PRACTICES FOR CMOS
WINNING STRATEGIES FOR SMASHING SILOS
1. Replace competition and isolation among silos with communication and cooperation.
2. Consolidate when necessary.
3. Act as a facilitator, establishing frameworks, encouraging collaboration through teams and
knowledge hubs, and upgrading marketing talent.
4. Think like a consultant: create company-wide insights, train marketing talent and participate in
strategy development.
5. Secure access to the C-suite. Teradata found that marketers with executive responsibilities
are almost twice as likely as others to believe that there are no barriers to interdepartmental
integration.
6. Force integration. In Teradata’s study, marketers say the best way for marketing to become more
intertwined with other functions is to set up integrated processes.
WHAT ARE SOME OTHER STRATEGIES USED BY OTHER COMPANIES TO BREAK DOWN SILOS?
According to David Aaker, professor of marketing at the University of California, Berkeley, a number of companies have
demonstrated particular success:
÷ Nestlé has a center of excellence focused on such issues as Hispanic marketing.
÷ Frito-Lay manages a brand evaluation system across countries.
÷ Cisco has virtual teams that gather using telepresence meetings.
÷ Chevron has a global brand council to coordinate brand visions and brand-building teams.
÷ The global Unilever Marketing Academy has 150 courses for employees, designed to put a common
management system in place.
10 | BREAKING DOWN MARKETING SILOS
CONCLUSION
While there is no one-size-fits-all solution for breaking down silos, when CMOs rally their teams around
the customer or client, making the case that departments who are wedded to their singularity are ultimately
hurting the customer, walls begin to crumble. Citrix and Conversant are cases in point. Streamlining is also
crucial; with marketing composed of so many teams, sometimes the reporting chain hinders both the customer
experience and operational efficiency. When Juniper Networks centralized its chain of command, efficiency
improved: tasks that used to take months now take days.
Filling in the gaps is also key—sometimes it’s adding the right employee to a team to get two disparate groups
to work together. The Wi-Fi Alliance found silos were best bridged by strategically placing a liaison between
the China and U.S. office. HubSpot achieved integration by physically locating marketers in teams according
to the stage of the customer’s product lifecycle. The lesson? With the right unifying strategic vision aligned
around serving the customer, silos can be broken down, bringing a multitude of benefits to the company,
its market and its employees.
Teradata and the Teradata logo are registered trademarks of Teradata Corporation
and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and worldwide.
COPYRIGHT © 2014 FORBES INSIGHTS | 11
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