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An Eye Toward Marketing’s Evolution and

its Essentiality to Business.

Ms. Jerri DeVard, Senior Vice President Chief Marketing Of cer of global security rm

ADT, recently told an audience at the ANA’s Brand Masters conference: “Marketing is the

heart and soul of our organization. We drive ADT growth, not just support it. We are the

engine. If it doesn’t happen in marketing, it doesn’t happen.”

And Ms. DeVard means what she says. A bold trailblazer and one of our Internationalists of the

Year for outstanding leadership in the transformation of ADT, she understands that as marketing moves from

disruption to attraction, its role within the larger corporate agenda will change—dramatically.

I’ve always believed that marketing will triumph as a business discipline when more CMOs become CEOs.

We’re witnessing the beginning of this move now; however, the UK may be a better current indicator than the

US. A report from Heidrick & Struggles in London, released October 2015, showed that British companies are

increasingly turning to marketers to ll CEO positions. In fact, more than 20% of FTSE 100 CEOs now come

from a marketing or sales background.

Nina Bibby, Marketing and Consumer Director at O2, the UK’s 2nd largest mobile telecommunications

provider and owned by Telefónica, recently stated at an M&C Saatchi event on brands: “We are a brand that

runs a business, not a business that runs a brand.”

There’s little question that the signi cance of marketing and its role in brand value, growth and loyalty is

shifting throughout the world.

People and ideas have always been core to the mission of The Internationalist. Few extraordinary things

occur in marketing—particularly multinational marketing—without a champion and a vision to lead the way.

Although teamwork is also extremely important, leadership is often a determining factor in success. This

edition of The Internationalist highlights our annual list of Internationalists of the Year—those individuals who

are not only champions, but are often reinventing our current concepts of marketing, as well as a number of

the ANA’s Brand Masters who generously shared their experiences and challenges with their peers.

It will be interesting to watch who among them does become a CEO in the coming years. We have no

doubt that it will be several of these individuals who are pushing the industry forward by embracing all of

marketing’s potential in a fast-changing digital age.

Deb Malone

Founder

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