Bernard Arnault, the chairman and CEO of LVMH, gets it too. Boy, does he get it! I once watched an interview with him on French TV. Apple had just become the world’s most valuable brand and, just as his interview was about to close, the reporter asked for his thoughts on Apple given its newly won status. The French magnate was effusive in his praise for Steve Jobs and Apple but then paused. The faintest of smiles flickered across his face and Arnault hunched his shoulders and offered up one final observation. He was sure that clients in the far distant future would be drinking Dom Perignon and travelling with Louis Vuitton luggage. But he was less certain that would be the case for the iPhone.

The t variable. Arnault was politely but forcefully making his point that LVMH was not just currently one of the biggest companies in the world with one of the best portfolios of brands. LVMH(t) was in an infinitely better place than almost any other organisation, because of the slow-moving nature of the categories it exists in and the almost eternal attraction of the brands it operates within those categories. Apple, for all its current glory, was less attractive if you looked at Apple(t).

Occasionally, I am asked which brands impress me at the moment (it’s always at the moment). At the top of my list is Louis Vuitton. Not because it’s owned by Arnault. Not because I used to work for the brand. Not because it’s to my taste. And not because of a current campaign or successful show. I am impressed with Louis Vuitton(t). With the fact that every year for 20 years the brand has grown, and every year any subsequent growth gets harder. And yet every year Louis Vuitton grows again.

Adding the t variable adds not just data points but a valuable perspective, which is as sorely missed as it is incredibly important.

It’s not fair to say that anyone can build a brand for a year. Most people cannot even do that. But to build a brand and then maintain it – even grow it over many years – is a very different challenge. To create not just a successful brand but a successful brand(t) is a rarer achievement. One in which marketers not only create a strategy and calibrate their tactics for the year, but for the many years ahead. Truly that is where marketing awards should focus.

Too often, we are blinded by an immediate, ephemeral success and we miss the harder, more valuable consistency that the t variable points us towards. Indeed, marketing recognition seems biased towards those who can turn around a brand or fix one that is broken, rather than those who simply maintain one’s success. We stare in awe at the guy who will hit 50 home runs this season (and then retire) and ignore Cal Ripken quietly warming up for his 2,000th consecutive game in his 17th uninterrupted season.

The same logic applies to marketing management. You can take a snapshot of the people running a brand at any one time and look at their skills, intelligence and approach. But this is just the current marketing capability. The missing perspective of marketing(t) is how long the team has been in place at that brand. How long will they stay there? It’s true that the teams at Diageo, Cadbury, Tesco and Unilever consist of insanely talented marketing people. But they have mostly been in place for a decade or more. And the t makes the ultimate difference.
Not because old people are better than young people. I see that discussion a lot now, especially when people point to the ridiculous lack of people aged 40-plus within advertising agencies. That’s a problem. Not because Gen X is better than Gen Y. That argument makes no sense from either end. The issue with too many young people is that it is statistically less likely that any will have spent enough time on the job and in their role to be really good at it yet. I’m not going to take a 50-year-old over a 25-year-old, I’m going to find out which one has been doing the job longest because all other things being equal, the t variable will be the difference.

Marketing is an ephemeral endeavour. Brands are only as good as their last campaign or latest sales results. Perhaps that is an unavoidable aspect of capitalism in the early 21st century. But adding the t variable adds not just data points but a valuable perspective, which is as sorely missed as it is incredibly important.

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