Making sure marketing pays

A lot of what I read about marketing sounds like a lot of baloney. I just can't figure out how a polo sponsorship or a billboard or a storefront on Second Life creates profitable sales - and while marketers can talk a great game, none of them ever seem to have the numbers to prove they actually won it.

That's why I found working with Les Moeller and Ed Landry, partners at Booz & Co., on their book, The Four Pillars of Profit-Driven Marketing: How to Maximize Creativity, Accountability, and ROI (McGraw-Hill), such an enlightening experience. These guys aren't just saying that you should know whether your marketing spend pays off, they show you how to measure marketing ROI and use that knowledge as the basis for enhanced profitability, creativity, and accountability.

The book just came out and here are a few links for more info:

You can read the Introduction and download a chapter at the book's web site. You can also read an excerpt from Chapter 4 in the new issue of strategy+business.

I helped write the book, so I'm biased, but if you're one of the people responsible for allocating or spending marketing dollars or responsible for making sure that those people produce great results, I'd say it's a must read...especially in this economy.

Learning from heretics

I didn't get a chance to post when the new, expanded edition of Art Kleiner's The Age of Heretics (Jossey-Bass), a very readable history of the influence of a handful of radical thinkers on management from the 1940s onward, hit the shelves. But now is as good as time as any, especially since Art will be conducting a free webinar based on the book next week. Here are the details:

The Age of Heretics: Lessons from Three Generations of Management Thinkers with Art Kleiner

Join strategy+business editor Art Kleiner in a live interactive webinar as he discusses the nature of effective leadership in times of change.

The most valuable management principles and practices often started as countercultural – including high performance management, group dynamics, teamleadership, quality, and diversity. In this Webinar, Art Kleiner will discuss the nature of corporations and the role of the heretics – the people who raise difficult questions on behalf of the organizations they work for. These days, with conventional wisdom failing, heretics are needed more than ever. Art will tell the stories of heretics who succeeded (and some who failed), and what we can learn from them.

Date and time: February 24, 2009 12:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time

To sign up: click this link