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Marketing as Strategy: Not Necessarily | Marketing As Strategy: Understanding the CEO's Agenda for Driving Growth and Innovation | Nirmalya Kumar

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	• Marketing As Strategy: Understanding the CEO's Agenda for Driving Growth and Innovation Nirmalya Kumar Harvard Business School Press, 2004 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

An essential book for marketing strategists

The expertise of specialized, internal departments has enabled modern corporations to become more competitive and profitable. However, Nirmalya Kumar contends that one department - marketing - rarely helps in this quest. In fact, many CEOs complain that marketing has not evolved past its focus on basic tactics. Kumar wants to correct this problem and suggests a seven-step process marketers can follow to become flexible, strategic thinkers and leaders. He advocates forgetting about the classic "4 Ps" of marketing (price, promotion, position and placement) and embracing the "3 Vs" (valued customer, value proposition and value network). We recommend this book to serious marketers who want to work smarter, adopt new ideas and use them to change their companies.

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Marketing & Value

We live in a service economy but pump our own gas. Customer Service keeps us on hold, is rude, clueless.

After 20 years, ATMs still ask the same 8 questions and repeatedly quiz longstanding customers Dinunzio, Johnson, Goldberg, Yoon and Krzykowky if we want to speak Spanish! CRM must stand for Can't Remember Me...

Zero-defect products are now expected. Loyalty is nil. From a features/function standpoint, product differentiation is less than .0001% - IBM, Dell, HP, Sun all have fast boxes. BMW, SAAB, Lexus, Mercedes, Audi all make great cars.

So how do companies capture customers? Create Value? Win?

Kumar addreses how marketing can help CEOs solve these and other problems with customer focus integrated into all functions, sound strategy and crisp tactics. Plus he has a plan to get to that transformational golden chalice - culture change that moves companies from what they sell to what they solve.

Kumar taught for years at IMD in Lausanne, the delux advanced management institute on the lake. Though the setting was sublime, he tackled gritty and immediate issues working with active Fortune 500 execs whose challenges were hardly "academic". Kumar shows his chops here by getting to the point, being crisp and focusing on linking marketing to value. Just what CEOs needs to hear... Well done!

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Marketing as Strategy: Not Necessarily

Marketing as Strategy follows the assumption that marketers have lost their seat at the big table because they no longer address the heavy strategic lifting in their respective companies. This may or may not be true. A good bit of the financial bent in most publicly held companies may have to do with the extreme pressures provided by SOX and related corporate governance issues in the post-Enron business landscape. As a result, most CEO's aren't marketers outside of marketing-driven industries.

However, the book is a good refresher for newly minted MBA's working for consumer packaged goods manufacturers. If this isn't you, just read chapter 7 on `market drivers', which is good reinforcement for anyone in early stage companies.

The premise is a good one - marketers can retake their place in the boardroom and executive suite and live more fulfilled professional lives. However, the suggestions given are positioned as inviolate rules. This assumption is incorrect. The idea that one should grow channels of distribution, not shrink them, is interesting but entirely dependent on factors specific to your industry and company. This clearly isn't an absolute. However, there are some good reminders to be studied here and the case studies are relatively fresh.

The seven big ideas are presented in chapters 2 through 8.

Chapter 2: From Market Segments to Strategic Segments: good thinking on ensuring your brand or company is focused on real differentiation from the ground up, not from the ad copy outwards. This is one of the better chapters.

Chapter 3: From Selling Products to Selling Solutions: it's a bit specious to say that `people don't buy power drills, they buy holes.' Actually, people buy power drills. They want holes. There are many ways to make a hole, one of which is by using a power drill, and one of those drills could be yours. Or not. Maybe they will buy your competitors' product instead. Ball bearing manufacturers might want to focus on being the best ball bearing manufacturers possible and not try to make motors. There is a kernel of truth here - know your customer, provide solutions to their problems, and differentiate yourself on these parameters - but the risk is that by taking too broad an interpretation, focus can be lost.

Chapter 4: From Declining to Growing Distribution Channels: not necessarily so. There are plenty of over-distributed products out there. There is also a huge amount of hype over `new' distribution options that fade over time. This is an over-statement. The chapter does provide a very good framework for analyzing channels, however.

Chapter 5: From Branded Bulldozers to Global Distribution Partners: a good read if you're working for a multinational corporation faced with global account issues. However, the `before' picture in branded bulldozers still has a lot of merit. This is not an adequate `before/after' comparison, as a result. You can be a good global distribution partner and still drive your agenda a la branded bulldozer.

Chapter 6: From Brand Acquisitions to Brand Rationalization: a good read if you're working for P&G, GM (you have my sympathies), or other brand-driven consumer company. Focus your brand strength. Mom and Apple Pie chapter.

Chapter 7: From Market-Driven to Market-Driving: this is great, as long as you're right. Don't focus on what your customers want, tell them what they want. "If we'd listened to our customers, we would have given them a faster horse", says Ford. And I think it was Andy Grove who said something along the lines of, "who cares what customers think - we haven't told them what to think." If you're right, you're in great shape. If you ignore your market, you might still be right. If you're wrong, you look very foolish. So good luck with this one.

Chapter 8: From Strategic Business Unit Marketing to Corporate Marketing: not necessarily so, again. There are as many reasons to decentralize as there are to centralize. Most F500 companies spend an inordinate amount of time switching back and forth between these two every few years because of corporate boredom and lack of imagination. This is not a magic bullet.

This book is a good read for those in the bulls-eye of its intended audience. It is not a general business read for marketers of all stripes in all industries. A good refresher, some good tools, but take everything you see here with a large grain of salt because these rules just don't apply to all situations as the book seems to promote.

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marketing under a new light

This is a very good marketing book. It's very well written and sees marketing as a function which has effects on all the company so that it may hopefully acquire a 'marketing mindset'. Some parts take inspiration from Chan Kim's Blue Ocean strategy but the graphs are confusing and unclear. I will use it as a main textbook for my BA marketing course in college. Efficient, effective and enjoyable.
Sergio Ianni
[...]

CEOs are more than frustrated by marketing's inability to deliver results. Has the profession lost its relevance?

Nirmalya Kumar argues that, while the function of marketing has lost ground, the importance of marketing as a mind-set-geared toward customer focus and market orientation-has gained momentum across the entire organization.

This book challenges marketers to change their role from implementers of traditional marketing functions to strategic coordinators of organization-wide initiatives aimed at profitably delivering value to customers. Kumar outlines seven cross-functional and bottom-line oriented initiatives that can put marketing back on the CEO's agenda-and elevate its role in shaping the destiny of the firm.

Nirmalya Kumar is Professor of Marketing at IMD-International Institute for Management Development, Switzerland.

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