Producing Accountability in Hard Times

CMOs' Perennial Charge Is Even Tougher Now -- but Not Impossible

CMO Strategy by AdAge, January 12, 2009 — Accountability is clearly keeping marketers up at night as the economic crisis continues to thread its way across industries around the globe and 2009 budgets come under greater scrutiny. So with economies performing badly in ways not seen in decades, all marketers should have a method-based and actionable answer to why marketing dollars are not a dispensable spending item but instead an investment with measurable ROI.

Assessing innovation metrics: McKinsey Global Survey Results

McKinsey Quarterly, November 15, 2008 — A recent McKinsey Global Survey shows that companies are satisfied, overall, with their use of metrics to assess innovation portfolios—though many findings suggest that they shouldn’t be. The companies that get the highest returns from innovation do use metrics well; these organizations tend to assess innovation more comprehensively than the others.

NBC's Olympic Test: Counting All the Games' Viewers†

Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2008 — NBC Universal plans to use its coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games to launch a new system for measuring viewership across an array of different media, including video-on-demand, cellphones and the Web, as well as traditional television. NBC hopes the new system — which will be offered to advertisers at the start of the new fall season — will give it ammunition to persuade advertisers to buy ad time on newer media such as VOD and cellphone video.

Emerson Electric's Innovation Metrics

Large companies, where data-driven decision-making rules the roost, have long sought ways to measure innovation. Emerson Electric thinks it has the answer

BusinessWeek, June 5, 2008 — Emerson Electric (EMR) is a company that embraces numbers. If something can be measured, the fast-growing industrial conglomerate doesn't hesitate to do so. On a wall at its St. Louis headquarters, photos of 2,000 Emerson managers hang in ranked order—from Chief Executive David Farr on down.

So as the company has sought to improve its innovation efforts, it has turned to—what else?—a new metric. With 140,000 employees and 52% of its $22.5 billion in sales coming from outside the U.S., the company, like many others its size, had set an arbitrary goal for its 60 far-flung business units: make a third of sales from products released in the past five years. Now Emerson is taking a different approach to tracking new-product sales—one it considers... continue reading

Google's 'Analytics Evangelist' Explains Why Websites 'Suck'†

Kaushik: Despite Mounds of Data, Marketers Don't Understand Consumers

Advertising Age, May 21, 2008 — Avinash Kaushik thinks one of the reasons why so many websites "suck" today is because of the hippo — as in the "highest paid person's opinion." And, yes, you're likely a hippo — a successful advertising executive, CMO or brand manager, pulling in a six-figure income, often found pontificating about what does and doesn't work online. You use tried-and-true metrics such as unique visitors and click-through rates to decide on the best design for your landing page or what content is best suited on your product site.

Google CEO Foresees Advertising, Technology Cozying Up

Marketing Daily, April 30, 2008 — Look for the advertising and the technology industries to grow cozier in a move similar to one experienced by the financial industry during the 1970s. That's when a set of scientists and mathematicians developed new metrics, and suddenly a generation of employees focused on analytics joined financial firms to maximize efficiencies and profits, Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt told attendees at the 90th annual American Association of Advertising Agencies Leadership Conference on Tuesday in Laguna Niguel, Calif.

Online, Measures of Success Are a Moving Target†

Advertising Age, March 14, 2008 — As media agencies continue their transition toward integrating digital media planning and buying with traditional media such as TV and print, MediaWorks is making the rounds to talk to the people charged with making it happen. This week, Publicis Groupe's Starcom announced it was promoting Kelly Twohig to senior VP-digital activation director of the agency. She will oversee the agency's digital spending, reporting to Chris Boothe, Starcom's chief activation officer.

Peter Kim on Consumer-Generated Media: You Have To Measure It To Manage It†

Brandweek, December 10, 2007 — I'll admit it: I stayed as far away from science classes as possible in school. If you're like me, familiar royalty terms may be more Burger King and Dairy Queen than Lord Kelvin. However, today's marketers can apply a lesson from Kelvin to help make sense of today's wild west of consumer-generated media. To paraphrase: if you can measure it, then you can manage it.

Managing Innovation†

How to get the most out of your company's big ideas

Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2007 — Managing innovation is one of the biggest challenges that companies face. They not only need to come up with new ideas, but they also need to foster a culture that encourages and rewards innovation. Otherwise, they risk being overtaken by their competitors.

At a recent panel discussion at the Tech Museum in San Jose, Scott Thurm, management-news editor for The Wall Street Journal, talked about managing innovation with four experienced managers at Silicon Valley technology companies: Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of the emerging-markets technology group at Cisco Systems Inc.; Judith L. Estrin, chief executive of Packet Design Inc., a network-technology company; Douglas Merrill, vice president of engineering and chief information officer of Google... continue reading

ANA Accountability Study: Marketing, Finance Not on Same Metrics Page

Marketing Charts, September 7, 2007 — Formal marketing accountability programs are becoming an accepted business practice among marketers, but dissatisfaction about marketing measurement and internal marketing accountability processes is rampant, according to a new study from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).

Though almost all surveyed companies (92%) have created some type of marketing accountability process, the study found a lack of consistency in how those processes are managed and which departments are responsible.