Have It Your Way: A Marketing Award for a Commercial Mess

Once upon a time, we learned that marketing had something to do with creating, keeping and satisfying customers.  Marketing success created growth and profitability.  Chief Marketing Officers had this responsibility and they spent gads of money with their media and creative agencies to make it happen.  When economies were growing, especially in the decades after the Second World War, marketing was a straightforward activity and CMOs were successful.  Recent times have been more troublesome, with e-commerce, digital/social and those pesky Millennials killing brand growth. Marketing adjusted a bit.  CMOs abandoned their spending proclivities to procurement, and then CMOs changed their job titles to Chief Growth Officer to remind them of their responsibilities.  That should have been enough … until Cannes confused the picture by honoring Burger King as Cannes Lions' Creative Marketer of the Year for 2017.