‘Marketing in the age of design and disruption’: CIM Talking Point lecture by Lawrence Chong

By Asnah Anver

Change as the saying goes is the only constant. This could not be more so a reality in the 21st century, with its rapid rate of change and disruption. But how can companies grapple with this reality? 

Lawrence Chong, the CEO of Consulus, a global innovation consultancy with multidisciplinary business and design capabilities, has made a career from tackling precisely this reality by helping companies redesign to meet the complex challenges of the 21st century. Consulus is based in Singapore but has since 2004 worked in Argentina, Bangladesh, Brunei, Italy, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam utilising a multi-disciplinary method to redesign organisations and enable innovation.

Here in Sri Lanka to deliver the second CIM Talking Point lecture for the year, Chong spoke on ‘Marketing in the age of design and disruption’ providing insight on the role of marketers and businesses in navigating the choppy waters of change to thrive in today’s rapidly advancing society. 

Chong began the talk by pointing out that when effecting such change it is often the marketing directors that are at the vanguard, as they interact with both internal and external people – as a part of their jobs. “In all of our change programs that we do around the world, our comrades in battle are the marketing directors or the HR directors. So in a sense all of you will have a first-hand experience of how hard it is to bring about change.” 

However, Chong urged reflexivity on the vocation and its role in today’s company: “We must also consider that marketing as a practice is at a cross road.” For a long time the profession has focused on how to perfect its practice, but Chong posed the question of whether the role of the marketer is about being a practitioner or shaping purpose and effecting change? Based on his experience, Chong adds, “My feel is that the vocation of the marketer is to inspire action. It’s more than just defining something. It’s more than just creating value. It’s really about inspiring action.” This is the premise from where Chong’s work to help navigate change takes off. 

However this comes with a caveat. “Before we can talk about change and the role of the marketer, we also have to ask ourselves what makes a company survive in the 21st century?” Chong argues for a realistic and practical view. For the harsh reality is that although most companies are confident of their survival, most will not because of the highly competitive market. It is only the few companies that do not take its survival for granted and therefore seek to effect change that has a chance, according to Chong. 

To illustrate this point, Chong states that in the 1920s the average lifespan of a successful company was 67 years but today, as there are so many more companies, the average lifespan is 15 years. “This is the world we live in. It is a far more competitive world to sell something. Because of it the chances of survival are lower.” 

As highlighted above, there is a resistance to change and therefore most people and companies prefer to do, what Chong calls ‘self-medicate’, by turning to marketing for a quick fix rather than addressing the bigger questions. However no substantial improvements can take place from such self-medication. Other companies are a little more transformational in its approach but still focus on marketing, customer service as opposed to business models and leadership and still do not ask the hard questions. 

Only very few companies are willing to address change head on, instead of relying on marketing, with the leaders asking the harder more configurative questions to arrive at a solution. “Only 5% of most companies will do what we call Transfiguration.” Under transfiguration, the harder questions of ‘why’ are probed into instead of the more cosmetic ‘what’ question. Chong states, “You have to be around people who are really asking ‘why’; the leaders who are willing to ask the improbable questions and are always challenging themselves. They are also the ones who have the most amount of value impact.”

This is all the more important as businesses today face a major challenge in creating and keeping customers. For Chong states that over the decades, not only the customers but the staff as well have evolved and product capabilities have exceeded expectations with technology. Thus the importance of thinking out of the box and differently was stressed. “Anyone in marketing knows the future of any brand and business is who gets to define it. If you get to define the idea, the future is yours. In a very critical way the challenge has always been who can define the future.”

Thus Chong states that in the 21st century it is important that businesses are keenly aware of the evolution of the customer, staff and society. It is when a business is able to sense and be in tune with the evolution of these three elements, that it can thrive. Furthermore, although the nature of the economy has changed from a manufacturing economy to one where the focus is on technology and the mind, the concept of a company has not evolved, where it is still viewed from the financial angle, Chong informs. “But that is silo. That is one dimension. A very limited matrix.” The situation today is such that being strong in one aspect alone such as marketing, engineering or services is not good enough, Chong states. Chong presents the company as consisting of aspects of identity, the idea, context, the people, community, resources, application, knowledge, and propaganda. In terms of transfiguring change, Chong highlights the importance of building a collective shared consciousness among staff and maintaining a unified core. This Chong states can be achieved through staff interaction and collaboration. “The more that you have different staff from different levels interacting with each other, that increases the chances of awareness, of what we call shared consciousness,” while adding, “we get to shared consciousness if we have more ‘whys’, if we are talking to each other.” 

When meaning is built through such interactions and shared consciousness and there is a buy in among all levels of staff that is when change happen, it was noted. However, Chong notes that equally important to creating change is sustaining the change. In light of this, including all staff, without making it the onus of one division such as marketing, in the change process is all the more important to sustain the momentum. It is through such a collaborative platform and shared process that frameworks should be designed and shared, so that all departments and disciplines are involved. The success of the change strategy in fact depends on this shared process. “Success factors for change are meaningful purpose bringing people from different disciplines to come together.”

Chong highlights the importance of marketers’ skills in this change process, in succinctly defining mission statements and inspiring action. Nonetheless the need to involve staff with different skill sets and from different levels to work in collaboration with marketing was stressed. “In order to support change we have to bring people of different talents together, people from marketing, finance, human resource, design.” While it is more often than not the marketer who is at the forefront of change, the marketer needs to collaborate with others to inspire action and change. 

But how does one know when it is time for a company to change? According to Chong it is when the company is more focused on the functional aspects as opposed to innovation and evolution. Thus an organisation is stagnant when it does not provoke questions and meetings are focus on the functional areas of what has been done. Chong states that a company and its top management need to be aware of both its functional role and evolution role. 

Chong concluded the latest CIM Talking Point session by noting the need for a mission oriented marketing – ‘the role of marketers is to inspire action and change for a better world’.

CIM Talking Point was held at the Hilton Colombo Residences and CIM Sri Lanka Chairman Brian Selvanayagam delivered the welcome address at the event which was well attended. During his visit, Chong also addressed local CEOs at the CIM CEO Breakfast Forum. 

Pix by Daminda 

Harsha Perera