The Challenging world of marketing family-owned businesses

More often than not advertising agencies partner with brands that exist as part of a large corporation or multinational company. But of course, one cannot forget the family-owned and independent privately held businesses that serve as the backbone of the British economy.

According to research from Oxford Economics and the Family Business Research Foundation, there are 4.8 million family businesses in the UK, directly responsible for 13.9 million jobs in 2020. This represents about 85.9 per cent of all UK private sector businesses and 51 per cent of the total private sector workforce. Once more, the family business sector generated £1.7 trillion in turnover and contributed £575 billion in gross value added to the economy.

As the new government sets its sights on driving economic growth, the role of these businesses becomes even more crucial. But how can marketing agencies effectively support this vital sector, and what unique challenges and opportunities do these partnerships present?

There’s no doubt that working with family-run businesses differs markedly from collaborating with large multinational corporations. These clients often require a more personalised approach, with a strategy tailored to their distinct values and long-term vision. The relationship is typically more intimate, with higher attention to detail and a deeper connection to the company’s legacy. While this close-knit collaboration can lead to highly effective creative output and rapid decision-making, it also brings a unique set of risks and challenges that agencies must navigate.

What are the specific nuances of working with privately owned businesses? What advantages and potential pitfalls should agencies be aware of? We turn to experienced marketers and agency practitioners to shed light on the essential role the marketing industry plays in helping family-owned businesses thrive in today’s competitive market.

How Bacardi balances legacy with modern marketing

As family-owned businesses go, few are as well-known as Bacardi, the spirit-maker with a 162-year legacy and over 200 brands and labels. Today, the company is led by Facundo L. Bacardí, the founder's great-great-grandson, who serves as chairman of the board.

Seb Micozzi, former global SVP of digital marketing and transformation at Bacardi, notes a key difference in his experience at Bacardi compared to his previous roles at PepsiCo and British American Tobacco. While those companies prioritise growth as their primary goal, Bacardi focuses more on profit delivery. According to Micozzi, "some of those profits go to the shareholders, and some are reinvested into the business."

Micozzi spearheaded the development of Bacardi's ecommerce platform, an effort that rapidly accelerated when the pandemic struck. What he described as having previously been "a slower, more deliberate" approach quickly caught fire out of necessity.

Bacardi's 400 family members and shareholders span seven generations, each with different life experiences and expectations of its operations. With few of them having business backgrounds, shareholder meetings often presented leadership with unexpected questions that would be unlikely to have been asked within listed companies. Despite this, Micozzi found Bacardi was "a professionally run organisation that has learned to value brand and marketing as tools for growth."

However, the marketing team often faced challenges when trying to innovate and evolve processes within a company so steeped in tradition. "It’s very personal and therefore very subjective to everybody," Micozzi explains. He praised CEO Mahesh Madhavan for creating space for marketers to operate, which has "developed a culture of long-term brand building" rather than focusing solely on short-term results. This shift also involved investing in technology infrastructure to compete with larger competitors like Diageo.

"That has allowed the marketers to build more confidence to tell a brand-led story over a trading-story," Micozzi concludes.

Founders as Figureheads

Having developed a rich history, the brains behind the whole operation can be held up as the visionary and the reason for the success of a brand, as can the latest in a lineage of founders. This can cause a blurring of family heritage and business needs with both weighing on their shoulders.

There are a variety of British operations that place that person at the centre of their communications; Warburton’s has Jonathan Warburton as its chairman and co-star of many of its brand campaigns, Thatcher’s latest stop motion campaigns features Martin Thatcher who took over the family business in 1992.

Then there are the founders such as Sir James Dyson and perhaps the poster ‘boy’ for family brand builders Sir Richard Branson.

Branson has been at the helm of Virgin Group for decades, and is now supported by his own family, including Virgin's chief purpose and vision officer Holly Branson.

Lisa Thomas was global chief brand officer and managing director of Virgin Enterprises Limited for four-and-a-half years. She joined from M&C Saatchi where she worked with brothers and co-founders Maurice and Charles Saatchi, gaining her first taste of family-run businesses.

Thomas acknowledges that when she joined in 2016, Branson was very much the focal point of attention – he was inextricably linked to the Virgin brand which had been built alongside his worldwide profile, offering her both challenges and opportunities.

“When it's so personal, and it's been so much about Richard, who has driven the business, it's challenging for the business as well as for the brand,” she says. “He really is - as you think he is - properly driving the business all of the time with new ideas every day.”

Thomas describes the attention he draws as being “a double-edged sword” for Virgin though. And while having a founder who also acts as a figurehead brings an authentic voice to the brand that many companies struggle to develop, it also places their actions under public scrutiny.

The need for Branson to be unburdened of some of the weight of the limelight became more evident when he was criticised for seeking loans and payment support to staff to save Virgin Atlantic during Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. Consequently, Holly and its executive team have made a concerted effort to build their own profiles and balance the use of the founder in recent years.

Thomas advises marketers working under a founder/figurehead to build trust with that person and not to place them on a pedal stool so that their ideas cannot be challenged.

“Take the personal out of it, be very rational and find the best way to get the best out of that founder for the business,” she adds. She also suggests that any strategic or tactical disagreement is solved by agreeing the best outcome for the business overall.

“Share their passion for the business, but also try to take the emotion out of those conversations so it feels supportive,” she offers.

The Agency Experience

We asked some agency executives to share some of their experiences of working alongside family-owned businesses.

James Middlehurst, managing director of The Gate, on working with Comte

We have been working with Comté cheese, located in the Jura region of France, for a number of years now. Comté has protected AOP (Appellation d'Origine Protégée) status and only cheese from this region, made in a certain way, can be called Comté. Its ties to the local community make it unique. Already hugely popular in France, it has steadily been growing here in the UK.

One of the first things you notice when you venture into Poligny, the home of Comté cheese and where the brand is headquartered, is that Comté is everywhere – front and centre in shops, restaurants, bars and coffee shops. 

Upon arrival at Comté HQ, you enter through a museum that delivers the full Comté experience. It is immersive, giving visitors a deep understanding and feel for the brand; the cheese, the region, the farmers, the cows and every part of Comte's provenance. A huge selection of high-quality Comté merchandise adorns the shelves; t-shirts, hoodies, oven-gloves and even Comté boxer shorts. Comté is a ‘love brand’ and Comté fans like to wear it.

Marketing meetings with Comté are not with the usual C suite, but rather a Co-operative. The CIGC, the steering committee which oversees the work of the export agencies, is made up of a broad church – representatives from all the entities that are vested in the production of Comté; the affineurs, the fruitiers, the dairy farmers as well as the marketing team, all have a voice at the table. All emphasising Comté’s connection to the terroir.

Honest, open discussion is followed by lunch. Wine, Comté (obviously) and the local cuisine (yellow chicken) is served. It is all part of the experience and the way things are done. It creates another strong connection to the gastronomy of the area and is a fitting way to conclude a morning of meetings about cheese.

Delivering the work is made simple. There is one person who we deal with on everything. The emphasis is on partnership and with it, creative freedom. Processes are agile and the work is genuinely integrated. Channel silos and stakeholder hoops have been removed; KPIs and metrics are kept simple; admin and bureaucracy is stripped right back; the agency is trusted to get on with things. 

Having a consistent agency team who live and breath the brand is fundamental. The client lets you feel they are in it for the long term and the induction is necessarily long. Ensuring anyone who works on the brand understands and feels exactly what Comté means to the local region and its cultural significance.

The principles of trust, joining up and simplifying are not new and they are characteristic of the very best client-agency relationships, but they can sometimes be forgotten and complexity can all too easily take over. Working with Comté is a good reminder of how to keep things simple.

Jason Cobbold, CEO of BMB, on working with La Famiglia Rana

Working with a family-owned business bears little resemblance to the typical patterns of client/agency interaction with a large corporation. For agencies this is not just about getting work signed off by a different kind of stakeholder (an owner versus a marketing department/ senior leadership team / board). It goes much deeper.  

First, there is the matter of culture. Owners care deeply and personally - and this transmits to the whole organisation. Agencies must care too and reflect this in every decision and piece of work, however big or small. Sharing the same set of values and living them is not an option, it’s mandatory.  

This can be intense but often extremely rewarding for partners. These are organisations where conviction trumps heavy process, where big bets can be made quickly and with a level of instinct. The soul of the company is there in front of you.  It’s the owner in the room.  Passion and inspiration come first hand. No cookie cutter brand pyramid in a PowerPoint chart in this world. What’s more, the distance from creative work to a decision is so much shorter for an agency.

Of course, it’s not always simple. The big bet can also be the sudden shift in focus. Or emotion can trump reason. But frankly agency life is so much more interesting, direct, and adventurous this way.  And the work?  So much better too.