Category: Accounting and Marketing
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Understanding Money Really Does Matter
Jacob Soll’s The Reckoning looks the history of financial accountability. He starts from early accounting and makes the point that tracking how the finances works has been central to the success (and failure) of many nations. The key point is that understanding money really does matter. Various potentates have over the years decided that financial…
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Putting Finance And Marketing Together
Dave Stewart has written a book packed with details of the financial impact of marketing. He surveys a large number of topics extremely connected to what I write about in this blog. (This probably isn’t too surprising. Dave is chair of MASB, which I am heavily involved in). What then is good advice for putting…
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Viewing Customers As Investments
Every now and then it is worth looking back at how earlier generations thought of marketing. (Or anything else really). There can be a lot to learn — although you often have to cope with some old-fashioned ideas and terminology. An interesting early piece is by Edward C. Bursk which was about viewing customers as…
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Management Accounting Ideas In Business
It is always interesting to see where ideas come from. Therefore, I was interested to read Johnson and Kaplan’s history of management accounting; Relevance Lost. This noted how a few important accounting ideas in business developed. Du Pont Return On Investment Model F. Donaldson Brown developed one of the most impressive views of business that…
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Customer Equity Statements And Financial Reporting
Think of a brilliant move in soccer. The player shows great vision, and excellent passing. There is some fantastic build up play where lots of people are involved. The movement shows amazing promise and then someone slips and blasts the ball miles away from the goal. To my mind that is where we are in…
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Management Accounting For Marketers
Marketers often want to make the case that accounting does not treat marketing well. I have good news for marketers, there is a major group of accountants who (should) agree with you. There are accountants who feel that financial accounting standards have subverted their discipline. Managerial accountants, whose job it is to deal with internal…
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A Business Case For Marketing Budgets
Christine Moorman and Jennifer Veenstra have a piece in the Harvard Business Review explaining how to make a business case for marketing budgets. It contains very sensible advice that CMOs and other senior marketers should heed. Working With Finance Perhaps one of the most important themes in this work is the idea that marketers need…
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Marketing Should Matter To Finance People
Chris Burggraeve shares his experience of the marketing finance interface in his new book Marketing is not a black hole. (Why black hole? There are a lot of science fiction references. I must say that I appreciate that even if the rocket ship veers towards cheesy). His main point is a good one, that marketing…
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Internal Measurement Of Brand Value
As regular readers will know I do a lot of work with MASB (the marketing Accountability Standards Board). Some of my colleagues at MASB wrote a paper about brand valuation. I want to highlight and reinforce their message. A key part of this is that the internal measurement of brand value is crucial to bringing…
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Stopping Undervaluing Customers Through Measurement
Rob Markey at Bain has had an interesting career. He clearly has done a lot right. He is an advocate for the importance of marketing in the c-suite. As such it is welcome when he weighs in to support important ideas. In a 2020 piece in the Harvard Business Review he laid out a plan…
