A few years ago, Pilote Media, the Full-Stack Marketing and sponsorship agency, developed a framework to extend Account Based Marketing (ABM) to a wider constituency. They called it Stakeholder Marketing. Aquitude Worldwide has partnered with Pilote Media to create workshops and training to help CMOs and marketing teams leverage this powerful concept.
Stakeholder Marketing for Complex and Uncertain Markets
Stakeholder Marketing has a very wide remit. It recognises that decisions made by a company, or in a brand’s name, can have far reaching consequences or impact on a wide variety of constituents. Traditional Marketing has usually put one stakeholder front and center - the customer, but increasingly, the interests of investors and shareholders, governments and even the environment as a stakeholder requires a new kind of marketing.
Take the AI industry as an example. On the one hand, you could argue that OpenAI and Anrhropic are just trying to make a great product that solves a problem we didn’t know we had. You can now ask a machine that cost $180 billion to build how to boil an egg. Of course, the retail consumer of ChatGPT is not the stakeholder that OpenAI is optimising for. They don’t even seem to be prioritising enterprise clients. In fact, there are two stakeholders they are marketing to - the financial markets, and the current US administration, or at least the executive branch. They are fighting messaging wars on multiple fronts and they don’t seem to be winning - data centers, existential threats to human exisitence, making the kill-chain more efficient by enabling autonomous weaponry, employee dissatisfaction and a perception that there is no real governance or care for the commonwealth.
Stakeholder Marketing begins by identifying who the stakeholders are. Some of them have been mentioned already - the customer, the end user, employees, other departments including finance and sales. Investors and shareholders, the media, the industry including partners and suppliers (to pay people on time or not is a Stakeholder Marketing decision). Then there are the community, local and wider, regulators, government and last but not least - the stakeholders who don’t have a voice, like the environment or future generations.
Some brands have been doing this for a while under the umbrella of sponsorship. Sophisticated brands that use sponsorship understand that its not just a logo on a fast car or boat or football jersey. Sponsorship allows you to generate content to deliver messaging to multiple audiences - fans, C-suite leaders in the paddock, others sponsors who might be suppliers or partners, employees and the media.
We Are All Stakeholders
Some companies, especially those in oligopolistic markets, where the customer has no other choice, have engaged in a more cynical kind of Stakeholder Marketing. But terms like Sportswashing and Greenwashing suggest that the customers and the public at large can see right through the attempts to launder a brand’s reputation through a kind of bribery.
We are all stakeholders. We all are all impacted directly or indirectly by decisions made by companies in a brand’s name. And, despite what it might feel like sometimes, customers still have power. In an age of AI where almost everything can be copied or commoditsed, where there is competition, even if you might have to look to the east to find it, customers don’t have to buy from the incumbent. Many of us are also shareholders - either individually or through pension funds.
It takes a brave brand to say, ‘you know what Boomers - you’re okay. We are going to optimise for the next generation now.’ Some brands are braver than others. Some nod along with the loudest pundits to ride the wave of the latest podcast-class opinion. Some keep their head down and say nothing. A rare few, take a moral position over a commercial one.
Which is why a Stakeholder Marketing Strategy is so important. You can choose to favour one group over another. You can’t please everyone. Just know that what the risks to your brand equity are of your decisions.
Engage a Fractional CMO to build your Stakeholder Markeing strategy.