The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Google Digital Academy have launched a new partnership. Together, the companies will work to drive an industry-wide initiative, the Talent Revolution, to significantly enhance digital marketing skills for leading companies.
A strong group of leading advertisers is already participating in the Talent Revolution: Tesco, Unilever, P&G, Vodafone, the UK’s Government Communication Service, and Cancer Research UK, are among more than 30 organizations that have assisted BCG with the initial phase of the initiative. A consortium of partners is also supporting it, including the Knowledge Engineers (advising as the education partner), the IAB (representing the digital-advertising industry), ISBA (the voice of British advertisers), the IPA (representing UK agencies), the Marketing Society (a leading network of senior marketers), and the Marketing Academy (a leadership program for top marketers).
As a first step, BCG and Google Digital Academy will run an annual survey of digital-marketing capabilities across industries. Every company that participates with eight or more marketers will get its own digital-skills “health check” in the form of a benchmark report, showing the company’s performance against its industry’s average. The intelligence from the survey will also inform a new Digital-Skills Index and an annual report that will provide insight into cross-industry digital capabilities. The survey will be run annually, so the industry can see how digital skills are evolving.
Using the information gathered from the benchmarking, the Google Digital Academy and BCG partnership will identify key gaps in digital marketing skills. This will inform a learning curriculum to help leading companies build their digital marketing skills and keep pace with the rapid changes that are occurring. Google Digital Academy and BCG are driving this first-of-its-kind coordinated industry effort with a firm goal in mind: to help companies make their digital marketing efforts dramatically more effective and efficient.
Dominic Field, Partner at The Boston Consulting Group, said, “One of the big problems that advertisers face is that they do not know what they don’t know when it comes to digital marketing. The annual Talent Revolution survey will help them identify where there are gaps in their digital capabilities. The Academy will help them raise their games to make more efficient and effective investment decisions.”