McKinsey’s Growth Triple Play … Combining creativity, analytics, and purpose can double your growth potential … Most importantly, driven by your marketers

June 25, 2021

Companies that integrate creativity, analytics, and purpose are delivering more than double revenue growth, claims McKinsey in an interesting thought leadership focus on marketers and other growth champions.

Their research, captured in “The Growth Triple Play” suggests that:

  • Only 7 percent of companies are delivering on the growth triple play by unifying creativity, analytics, and purpose. They are driving average revenue growth of 2.3 times versus peers from 2018–19 (which increased to 2.7 times versus peers from 2019–20).
  • In the period 2018–19, companies using just one of the capabilities—either creativity, analytics, or purpose—saw an average growth rate of more than 6 percent. Adding a second component saw growth rates climb to more than 7 percent. For those that employed the full triple play, growth rates climbed to more than 12 percent.
  • CMO’s have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lead growth, as 78 percent of CEOs are now banking on CMOs and marketing leaders to drive growth.

Reading in more detail, McKinsey’s team suggests that the historic shifts brought on by the pandemic have fundamentally changed the role of marketing leadership and the chief marketing officer (CMO) with 78 percent of CEOs now banking on marketing leaders to drive growth.

Based on research covering how 860 executives across the globe are prioritising investments and capabilities that help accelerate growth, the report identifies three elements – creativity, analytics, and purpose – that constitute a “growth triple play” providing at least two times the growth of peers who don’t invest in all three in tandem.

Companies that use the three elements of the growth triple play together – creativity, analytics, and purpose – achieve dramatically higher average growth rates ; 2.3 times compared to companies that don’t use any of the three elements. The results were even more dramatic during the pandemic, when the impact of using the full triple play boosted growth rates by 2.7 times.

The cumulative impact is striking. In 2018–19, companies that used any one of the capabilities – whether creativity or analytics or purpose – saw an average growth rate of more than 6 percent, for companies that added a second component, growth rates climbed by another 15 percent to more than 7 percent, and for those that employed the full triple play, growth rates shot up by 67 percent to more than 12 percent.

Only 7 percent of companies, however, have been able to use all three elements successfully in combination.

Each element of the triple play is critical.

Creativity is part of the origin story of marketing. It’s in the breakthrough ideas that have always underpinned bold, imaginative campaigns. The last revolution in marketing was all about the fusion of creativity and data analytics. What’s new today is partly the addition of purpose, the statement of a goal higher than just ringing up the next transaction.

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