Proud to be a marketer

TED LEVITT defined corporate purpose as creating and keeping customers. Marketing Excellence 2 demonstrates how to do this with impact and imagination. It contains 34 case studies chosen from star winners in the Marketing Society Awards for Excellence, 2007–2010.

A wide range of topics is covered from familiar ones like brand revitalisation and customer insight to newer areas such as social enterprise, employee marketing, and sustainable marketing. Cases include many types of activities – from fmcg to retailing, telecoms to energy, fast food to insurance, NGOs to the public sector. Only banking fails to feature. Its practitioners could learn much from this book.

All case studies are readable but several stood out as excellent for me. O2 extended the brand by turning the much-derided Millennium Dome into the world’s most popular music venue, while giving O2 customers special privileges and access. Customer retention grew significantly, and econometric analysis showed a 26:1 ROI.

Hovis and Kentucky Fried Chicken are classic brand turnarounds, through product development and compelling communication. Shell demonstrated how to apply marketing principles to HR. Shell had to double its number of highly skilled recruits globally. It did so through sophisticated treatment of potential recruits as customers, cutting cost per recruit by half as well. Keep Britain Tidy used marketing to change public attitudes, cost effectively. It achieved a 31% reduction in litter – the marketing budget was only £238K.

There are numerous lessons to be learned from the book. Successful marketers are all-rounders – good at analysis and strategy, skilled in managing complex networks of stakeholders, but also imaginative. Great marketers have courage, and always seek to be different. It emphasises that brand revitalisation is about rediscovering the original appeal. Clear, quantified objectives and rigorous measurement, using econometrics when possible, are essential. Reading this excellent book made me proud to be a marketer.

Marketing Excellence 2, Hugh Burkitt, The Marketing Society (2010), £45