Executive Summary 1 How much attention does your board give to the sources of cash flow? Perhaps what gets measured is not always what gets done but it's a start. This introduction summarises the reasons for regular marketing assessment by the whole board, key marketplace metrics, and assessing the firm's state of innovation health. Improved marketing requires employees to change what they do, and the way that they do it. Accordingly, internal marketing is a crucial component. It concludes with five recommendations for immediate implementation. Premier league metrics: a summary Chapter 1: Assessing your present system The key performance measures ("metrics") should be compared with both internal aspirations (plan) and external benchmarks (competitors). Furthermore, short-term performance needs to be adjusted for increases, or decreases, in brand equity, or whatever the intangible market-based assets may be called. Boards need to review effectiveness, getting the job done, as well as efficiency, achieving goals at least cost. Chapter 2: Measuring market-based assets The, complementary, financial and non-financial approaches to assessing brand equity, the role of brand valuation and its limitations. Chapter 3: Stages of assessing marketing performance How most firms evolve from a rudimentary appreciation of what marketing does, and how it can be assessed, to scientific, or forensic as Gavin Barrett nicely called it, evaluation. The extent that marketing itself should be scientific is open to debate but its evaluation process should be orderly in order to maximise organisational learning. Chapter 4: Choosing the metrics There are two approaches to measuring the performance of a single brand market segment (BMS): the general and the tailored. The universal uses three P&L metrics compared to plan and competition along with five indicators of brand equity. The strategic approach derives metrics from the firm's particular goals. Chapter 5: Supplying the metrics Most firms now rely on their internally generated, mostly financial, figures. Larger firms use more measures and have created marketing databases. Integrating metrics from diverse sources creates its own problems. After reviewing the market research industry and current trends in the supply of measures, the conclusion is that the Chief Financial Officer is probably the best person to bring all metrics together to give the board an impartial marketing overview. Chapter 6: Measuring innovation health Most firms recognise the crucial importance of innovation but few are happy with their measurement of it. The most popular metric is the proportion of sales represented by products launched in the last 3 or 5 years but that looks back not forward. The issue has less to do with the number of innovations than the way the firm fosters those that matter. A broader approach is to measure innovation health in terms of strategy, culture and innovation process. Chapter 7: Internal marketing metrics There is increasing recognition, especially in the service sector, that internalising the marketing effort across all employees provides the driving force for success. Leading companies, such as BP/Amoco, routinely assess employer brand equity. How should marketing and HR specialists work together? Should employee behaviour and attitudes be measured as if they were customers? Chapter 8: The fuzzy future Total firm marketing performance is the aggregation of the performance of each brand market segment (BMS) adjusted by the change in its internal health (innovation and employee). In practice, this assessment is simplified by focusing on those few units that make up most shareholder value. This final chapter draws conclusions and speculates about future best practice. The present ambiguities in assessing marketing performance should not be replaced by perfect alignment and rigidity. Rigor goes with mortis. We need some misalignment to maintain dynamism and growth. Appendices A. A list of the most used metrics, and what they mean. B. A check list and programme for a Metrics task force C. Innovation Health Metrics - Supplement to Chapter 6.
