Business of Marketing and Branding Marketing and branding ideas for business marketing

"So why is marketing getting so little respect or support from top executives around the world? We believe that two principal factors are at the root of the issue. The first factor, quite simply, is that many senior executives do not fully understand the role and purpose of marketing within their company—due, in part, because senior executives tend to have finance or operations, not marketing, backgrounds. According to Chief Executive magazine, just 12 percent of Fortune 700 CEOs have worked in marketing at some point in their careers."

I agree that few people understand the function of marketing, but whose fault is that? Most CEO's do understand the value of sales, even though they largely come from an operations or finance background.

If you are a marketer and you can't demonstrate/communicate your own value in a firm, how are you going to demonstrate your companies value to a customer? The answer Accenture comes up with is a bit self-serving; it's all about CRM of course and it won't come as a surprise that the author, Patrick O'Halloran is a partner in the Accenture Customer Relationship Management group....

Marketers should identify their own performance measurement criteria and negotiate with other senior managers to get access to the tools they need, just like a production manager must argue his case for a new machine. Just maybe, a lot of marketers are not that keen on accountability?