Results vs. Costs

Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.
– Peter Drucker

The quote above is from Peter Drucker’s book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The book was first published in the 1980s, and it was re-released a couple of years ago. It is still sound advice. If you want to improve business, marketing and innovation had better lead the way. Considered by many as the preeminent business consultant and author for decades, Drucker is the person who coined the term knowledge worker.

Considerable effort should be spent on measuring the success (or failure) of marketing and innovation. Why? Another famous Drucker quote answers that question: “What’s measured improves.”

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The Agency Of The Future Is Arriving Too Late

I keep reading all these stories about the agency of the future. Like this one, and this one, and this one.

Who has time to wait for the future? Most businesses want new ideas and thinking that can help them now. They don’t have time to wait while some marketing firms attempt to evolve.

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CMOs And The Bottom Line

A new Stuart Spencer study of senior-level marketing executives has confirmed what many in business already know: the CMOs number one priority is influencing the bottom line (Ad Age story here). The complete results of the survey will be released today at the CMO Summit in Florida.

According to the study, other critical innate or learned qualities necessary for today’s CMOs include:

• Being a risk taker
• Willingness to make tough decisions
• Good problem-solving ability
• A strategic, customer-centric orientation to marketing
• Digital focus
• Multichannel and cross-industry experience

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Social lender Zopa voted “most threatening non-bank competitor”

While social or peer-to-peer lending isn’t new (in Internet time), what is new is the recognition Zopa received this month as the world’s “most threatening non-bank competitor.”

Amidst the steady stream of stories about the worsening credit crunch and tightening lending standards, Zopa’s style of social or peer-to-peer (P2P) lending stands as a virtual beacon for beleaguered borrowers and serves as a potential investment alternative for would-be P2P consumers-turned- lenders. Traditional banks beware!

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AdTech and A New Way To Listen

I’ve been at Ad:Tech in San Francisco this week, which labels itself as The Event for Digital Marketing. However, as many of the speakers pointed out: What isn’t digital in media these days or rapidly heading that way?” In light of that, Ad:Tech is really about what is happening in marketing—period.

As fast as the spending in digital marketing is growing, what amazed most people here — from both the client side and marketing industry side of the business — is why it isn’t even happening faster. Most people here felt the recession or near-recession we are currently experiencing will actually accelerate the shift to digital media. Many companies, faced with a slowdown in sales, will need to find a way to sell more products or services with less resources. The general consensus is that this will push more companies to opt for the greater and immediate return on investment that webcentric marketing programs can deliver.

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