MEDIA & AMRKETINGUnited Drug chief Liam Fitzgerald is a model for marketers seeking top jobs
THERE ARE very few former advertising agency executives in the country who command an annual remuneration package of €1.1 million. But such is the case with 43-year-old Liam Fitzgerald, the chief executive of United Drug, who was recently named All-Ireland Marketing Champion by the Marketing Institute.
According to the institute, Fitzgerald scooped the top gong for being a business leader who puts marketing at the heart of his business and for being a role model for marketing professionals who aspire to a top job around the boardroom table.
The United Drug group, with annual turnover of €1.6 billion, is mostly involved in wholesale and distribution of pharmaceutical and medical products, and in recent years the group has got involved in providing outsourced sales and marketing services to pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Fitzgerald started his career with Jefferson Smurfit Group before moving to ad agency Dimension, where he first worked as an account executive handling advertising for Gilbeys and CC before running the graphic design department.
He joined United Drug in 1993 and was in the right place at the right time when his predecessor Jerry Liston retired.
Says Fitzgerald: "The company has been on a big growth curve and I have been fortunate to have been involved in a lot of the growth areas. When Jerry Liston retired, the board had a choice to make between youth and experience and they went for youth."
Fitzgerald's progress is certainly an inspiration to his peers in the Marketing Society, where he was once chairman. According to the Irish Management Institute's annual survey of executive pay, the upper quartile of marketing directors in very large firms have average remuneration packages of €264,000 per annum.
By contrast, last year Fitzgerald's basic salary of €550,000 in United Drug was topped up with a €300,000 bonus, €180,000 pension contribution and €80,000 worth of company shares.
His total package was a €240,000 improvement on the previous year.
Fitzgerald concedes that few marketing professionals make it to the top job.
"One of the points I made in my acceptance speech to the Marketing Institute was that marketing should be a core part of any post-graduate business education, as understanding the dynamics of the market you are in is fundamental to business success."
He added: "You don't see many FMCG [fast-moving consumer goods] marketing people at the top of Irish organisations, but that's partly due to the fact that a lot of the best marketing professionals work for subsidiaries of international companies, and they progress to senior positions in those multinationals overseas."
For the marketer to make it into the boardroom, Fitzgerald emphasises the importance of acquiring financial disciplines. He explains: "Marketing professionals must have qualitative as well as quantitative skills. The financial disciplines must go hand in hand with awareness of how a market works."
Fitzgerald rates Liam O'Mahony of CRH, Anglo Irish Bank's David Drumm and CC's Maurice Pratt as chief executives who tick the right marketing boxes. He said: "They have a great understanding of where their business fits into each market segment and how best to exploit that market position to their competitive advantage."
In more challenging economic times, Fitzgerald argues that companies should stick with their marketing programmes. "Cutting back on marketing spend is the last thing any company should do especially if they are trying to build a brand," he said. "I would be a strong subscriber to that view."
THE CHALLENGE media owners face in "monetising" their websites is illustrated by the financial performance of RTÉ.ie, one of the most popular websites in the country. The site grew its audience by 65 per cent through 2007, with 1.6 million unique users delivering 36 million page impressions per month for advertisers.
Commercial revenue doubled to €2.2 million but the site still ended up recording a loss of €1.5 million.
In the RTÉ annual report for 2007, RTÉ's online activities are deemed to be a public service, though in the accounts the online unit does not receive a "licence fee revenue attribution". This accounting nicety may well be a moot point for other media websites who compete against the RTÉ Goliath without the benefit of a €196 million levy on owners of TV sets.
siobhan@businessplus.ie
