Peter Fisk provided a well-reasoned response to my comments on his and Hamish Pringle’s effort to develop a new marketing language. Below is his response. I’d like to encourarage all marketers to weigh in on this topic. Send me an e-mail or leave a comment below.
Firstly, thanks for taking the time to consider the customer capital provocation, and secondly, congratulations on a great website!
Im sure we agree on almost all, but here are some thoughts in response to your points:1. Marketers are already perceived as being out of step with the rest of the enterprise. Will not a new language simply increase and/or highlight these differences?
– agree, however our feedback is that its the functional marketing jargon (eg advertsing recall, brand equity, channel throughputs, response rates, referal rates etc etc) which antagonise people – whereas someting simple like how many customers, etc is indisputable language which makes sense to everyone and isnt functionally remote.2. Will a new language be perceived as a means for marketers to recast or mask failed branding and CRM initiatives?
– I hope not! I hope it will bring it back down to earth – "so how many more customers will stay because of the brand, and how much more will they pay" – one of the big challenges is to make forward-looking investments more tangible (eg spending now on brand building which may largely pay back in future years).3. There are four existing metrics that can be used to measure marketing effectiveness. They are market share, sales revenue, operating margin and budget. These metrics are familiar, unambiguous, honest, and accurate.
– agree totally, these should still be the core metrics, and I will make this clearer. Its more about understanding the things that drive these. I spent alot of time researching how investment analysts work out whether to invest in companies or not – ultimately they are seeking to project future year cashflows. Todays performance is a starting point, then they want evidence in terms of how the company will out/nuderperform their sector in future years – eg by having strnoger brands, premium prices, higher growth rates or whatever.
More generally you might be interested in my broader thoughts which you can read at my websites
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Peter, Mike alerted me to his response and views last night. I’ve taken a quick scan of each of your 3 websites. My view is that marketing is not so much misunderstood by the key organisational functions (Finance, HR, IT etc) as the fact that the organisation misunderstands and distrusts marketing practitioners. In my experience, marketing, as a critical pillar of the business, is well understood and regarded by most of the enlightened finance directors (and HR, IT directors as well) I’ve worked with. Accountants can play around with tax reduction, depreciation rates and cost cutting schemes for so long before the truth hits them that what they really require to feed and grow the business is market share driven cash flow. Any newly qualified accountant can deliver tax reductions, massaged accounts and cost cutting programmes – it takes a finance director of rare genius to drive an expansionist and market aggressive organisation. What FDs struggle with are the amateurish antics of the personnel that staff the marketing department – including the marketing directors themselves. Too much upfront resource spent on blue sky tomorrow based around soft notions such as “image building” and not enough grasp of the real dynamics of account gains and genuine initiatives to shift customer preferences. CRM is an example whereby £millions (or $s) have been wasted on a false quest for the marketing holy grail. Along with Mike, I agree that as marketers we already have most of the vocabulary we need. To me it seems if a marketer really knew his (or her) internal customers he’d learn the language that they respond to positively. That might mean not just understanding the basics of the P&L, Balance sheet and cashflow statements but for example how FDs and CEOs make decisions on competing projects or compromise short term liquidity reporting with long term capital growth ambitions etc, etc. But I’m sure the odd new expression won’t do any harm. After all, marketing is looking a little stale.
Good conversation. My marketing team is struggling witht his exact issue. Biz dev doesn’t get get it. Management doesn’t get it. Board doesn’t get it. Maybe it is us?!
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