About
Why Strategic Marketing is Business Critical
Dr Karen Hanvik’s work is driven by a clear belief: Marketing must be the most valuable strategic capability in every enterprise. Marketing is the only function that sits at the intersection of customers, markets, products, brand, and growth. When it is directed with intent and governed with discipline, it becomes a central driver of strategic clarity, leadership confidence, and sustainable, profitable enterprise value.
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Commitment to Strategic Marketing
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Dr Karen Hanvik’s work is grounded in a sustained commitment to repositioning marketing as a governed enterprise capability, one that boards and executive teams can rely on to inform strategic direction, investment decisions, and long-term value creation.
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Across her career, she observed a recurring structural reality. Organisations expected marketing to drive growth and differentiation, yet positioned it primarily as an executional function. This misalignment constrained its contribution and diluted leadership confidence in its judgement. Her work exists to resolve that gap.
​By reframing marketing as a leadership capability, embedded in a strategic system, one that can be deliberately designed, directed, and governed, Karen enables organisations to rely on marketing as a source of enterprise value, not simply delivery.
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The Strategic Marketing Value System™
Empower
Growth
Dr Karen Hanvik developed The Strategic Marketing Value System™ to ensure marketing creates enterprise value, by defining value explicitly, embedding strategic judgement into decision-making, and governing both at enterprise level.
What This Means For Leaders​
When marketing is approached as a strategic system rather than a functional activity, the leadership relationship with marketing changes materially.
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Marketing becomes:
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A source of strategic intelligence and informed judgment rather than a reporting layer
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A contributor to enterprise direction and strategic choice rather than a downstream executor
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A governed capability aligned to commercial priorities, capital allocation and leadership accountability
This creates greater confidence at leadership level, enabling marketing to be engaged where enterprise value is shaped, strategic investment decisions are made, and future performance is deliberately steered.
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Expertise
Lead by Dr Karen Hanvik PhD, MBA, FCIM
Karen Hanvik’s perspective has been shaped through leadership experience across mid-market, growth, and complex enterprise environments, including exposure to global and FTSE-listed organisations. This experience informs a practical understanding of how strategic decisions are made, governed, and sustained at enterprise level.
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Her work applies academic rigour deliberately to real commercial and organisational problems, enabling marketing to be examined not as a collection of activities, but as a strategic capability with explicit value logic—one that can be designed, directed, and governed within leadership systems.
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Holding a PhD, an MBA, and Fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Karen brings an analytically disciplined and commercially grounded approach, designed to operate within the realities of executive accountability, governance structures, capital allocation, and organisational constraint.
Discuss Engagements for your Organisation
Schedule a Strategic Conversation
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Arrange a strategic conversation with Dr Karen Hanvik to explore how the Strategic Marketing Value System™ can be applied within your organisation to establish marketing as a governed driver of growth, investment confidence, and enterprise value creation.
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