Marketing University: Systematic capability-building from within

How the best companies attract, develop, and retain good talent

A Marketing University is a powerful capability- and culture-building tool used by renowned companies the world over. It’s a multi-year, in-house training curriculum where knowledge, processes, and values are imparted seamlessly through courses that build on each other.

Here, students learn “the company way” of doing things together with the peers they will work with for years to come. The shared learning journey, cohort by cohort, builds a sense of camaraderie: you not only develop talent, you retain it.

Now, imagine having your own Marketing University. What would it have? World-class faculty, accurate alignment with target competencies, marketing frameworks and processes relevant to your own business, and a clear progression of skills from one program to the next.

The case studies would be about your own successes and defeats. Class output would address your own business issues — making immediate return on investment possible. The processes learned can be confidently applied by your teams, who find these so helpful that they would be eager to experience everything the Marketing University has to offer.

The best part? You won’t have to create it yourself.

A complete, bespoke Marketing University has been developed and perfected over the last 20 years by Acumen Strategy Consultants — the Marketing Leaders Academy.

Acumen is powered by strategists and practitioners in General and Brand Management from well-known local and international companies with expertise in a diverse set of industries. This diversity enables multi-disciplinary perspectives on clients’ business concerns, and being practitioners allows them to deliver relevant, practical, and actionable solutions to any marketing problem.

Acumen’s Marketing Leaders Academy has been run multiple times within top-tier companies in different sectors, including branded food and beverage, food processing, alcoholic beverages, and telecommunications, among others. For these companies, Acumen is more than an external training provider — it’s a partner working side-by-side, hand-in-hand, shoulder-to-shoulder to transform them towards higher levels of performance.

CUSTOMIZED BY EXPERTS

No Acumen program can begin without first undertaking a rigorous discovery process to diagnose the current state of the client’s business, organization, market and consumer.

The first step is assessing the team’s competencies — what they are now, what should they be — using Acumen’s proprietary multi-touch gap analysis. Only after the team’s baseline competencies are determined do its client directors recommend and develop the right solutions.

What if the team’s marketing competencies are not well-articulated, or simply outdated? Acumen will help identify gaps, sharpen definitions, and create clear delineation between levels through the Acumen Competencies Library that’s comprehensive and customizable to any industry.

After careful assessment of the team’s abilities and improvement areas, the program is developed: each business, each team, each brand is unique and so all solutions are customized.

The Marketing Leaders Academy goes beyond sharing tools and facilitating exercises: it changes behavior and institutionalizes fact-based decision making.

At its core is its disciplined Marketing Analysis and Planning Process that expert marketers follow:

• Discovery: Business, consumer and market understanding

• Strategy: Development of overall business growth strategies

• Implementation: Brand plan development and implementation

• Assessment: Evaluation of brand plans

Faculty, of course, is key.

Acumen’s seasoned practitioner-trainers know what a best-in-class brand manager is and ensure that Marketing Leaders Academy participants imbibe the skills and behavior they would require on their own. They are deeply committed to enabling and empowering clients to skillfully do what they do and bring co-created strategies to life. How does Acumen know they’ve succeeded? While other capability-building program providers only measure workshop satisfaction, Acumen goes beyond by providing individualized participant assessments, follow-through recommendations, and a “revalida” — post-training presentations where participants demonstrate actual application of learned skills in their work.

This commitment to embedded learning and holistic development of marketing skills translate to Acumen’s unique RVA brand of service: Relevant, Value-Adding, and Actionable.

A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS SOLUTION

A regional corporation with a Philippine head office worked with Acumen to uncover hundreds of innovation ideas. They applied Acumen’s proprietary 6-Step Insight Generator, a repeatable process that enables crafting of fact-based insights culled from consumer research and engagement data. The result? Its marketing team was able to sift through all the ideas and launch prototypes of the best ones — all within two months.

Numerous testimonials show why Marketing Leaders Academy has high approval ratings from discerning clients.

From the vice-president of a food and beverage company: “Acumen is a Partner in building capability. Adjusts well to the current state of their customers and able to create bespoke programs that are relevant and impactful.” Capability-building is both preventive and prescriptive. When product innovations can’t find a market, when old ad campaigns fail to connect with new consumers, or when competition finds a gap in your marketing mix and exploits it, you need highly competent and strategic teams to provide solutions.

Develop them from within through a Marketing University — a visible and mutually rewarding commitment to the growth of your people. It’s the secret of some of the best companies in the world, and one of the best things you can do to strengthen your business. — Vanessa Bicomong, Program Director for Customer Centricity, Acumen Strategy Consultants (acumen.com.ph).

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