Is your entire company thinking like a marketer? It should be.

—Alex and Axel

December 2024

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One thing is certain: you can never be too certain about consumer behavior. Where and how shoppers interact with a company’s product is always evolving. An organization’s marketing function should evolve as well. Even back in 2011, the authors of this McKinsey Quarterly classic observed that a successful marketing function can no longer rely on the traditional approach of disparate marketing efforts. Instead, marketers must engage effectively with customers across the entire consumer journey. And to achieve that, everyone in an organization needs to think like a marketer.

Ensuring that a company’s marketing function is firing on all cylinders across the entire organization involves four crucial dimensions: embed core marketing activities across multiple functions; establish marketing councils to help boost management coordination; prioritize the gathering of customer insights and behavior; and engage in comprehensive data analysis to act on new consumer data.

Today’s consumer environment is only getting more complex, and consumers themselves ever savvier. To learn how to meet the marketing moment, read our 2011 classic “We’re all marketers now.”

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