Actionable takeaways from a gem of a conference

I had the privilege to attend and present at Marketing-Accountability-Standards-Board's (MASB's) annual Summer Summit hosted by Rutgers Business School at Rutgers University–New Brunswick and led by our emcee Frank Findley.

This is a summary of takeaways from the conference for the strategic marketer, the forward-looking finance professional, the strategic executive. We also learned some things that had our jaws drop and our mouths drool. It doesn't give justice to everything that was covered and I welcome attendees and presenters to provide their perspectives and links to content worth reading/watching below.

TL/DR: Businesses succeed when they conduct robust customer-in market segmentation combined with a common definition of financial performance taking into account the TIME that it takes to bring business strategy to reality through product development, marketing, sales, and customer service (hint, it ain't quick but done right it is immensely valuable).

Please note that many of these presentations were recorded and please save this article or comment below for Erich Decker-Hoppen or myself to send you the YouTube links when they're ready!

Let's talk about Growth Baby, let's talk about profi-ta-bi-li-ty! (my title)

To kick things off, David W. Stewart, MASB's chair, and Joanna Seddon, MASB's CEO summarized the extent to which growth or profitable growth has become an expressed priority across executive and marketing ranks and as key topics across industry conferences.

There is a fundamental disconnect as to where growth comes from functionally and operationally. A number of Fortune 500 companies are getting rid of CMOs and replacing them with Chief Growth Officers - ceremonial title changes will not bring about growth. The Number of CMOs are down vs 5 and 10 years ago. Less than 10% of CEOs have been in marketing roles in their careers. ~5% of corporate boards have an ex-CMO.

In my perspective there is a fundamental disconnect in executive ranks as to what types of actions and companies need to take to drive growth. Joanna's presentation reinforced what I'd been hearing in conversations about companies having a disconnect between strategy, understanding customer demand, and financial performance. Marketing plays the role of being a bridge between corporate strategy and the customer: Strategy needs to be directed toward a defined market. Guess who's job it is to identify and segment the market? The Market-er (you see what I did there?).

Sadly a lot of what I increasingly like to call 'full-stack marketing' borrowing a term from software development is lacking. These are marketers who understand that any marketing strategy, tactics and execution MUST start with a responsible and objective definition of the market to inform the development of corporate strategy against that market.

Key takeaway: if you want to have a competitive advantage as a company, include a season strategic and measurement-driven marketer on your board - have your CMO sit on your board!

we then moved on to my co-presentation with Dawn Colossi

The value of measuring brand as a revenue and valuation driver (the official title)

In this presentation Dawn and I shared our joint experience about 4 years ago when she was the CMO at FocusVision with a very challenging mandate: first-time-software-company-owning PE firm, an entire product line wiped out by Covid-19 overnight, a target exit within 18 months, a lean team, and an ambitious goal of expanding from a legacy customer base of market researchers to the insight departments of corporations. Oh, and a major competitor just got bought for 2X+ more than anyone expected.

To be able to solve for this challenge, we were retained Avasta and we brought our expertise to identify the Winnable Addressable Market (WAM) that was available to FocusVision given these circumstances and the budget constraints that Dawn and her peers were under. It required cleaning the company's internal CRM data and matching it to the buyer universe while at the same time anonymously engaging with the customer base in identifying how much equity there was (and wasn't!) for FocusVision to compete. I had the opportunity to introduce the Winnable Addressable Market concept and calculation earlier this year in my recording from MASB's virtual summit on Measuring Brand to Drive Demand.

For FocusVision focused on segmenting the market based on what had equity, financial potential, and executional proficiency within FocusVision under the tight timeline. This required FocusVision to stop pursuing large swaths of the market because they were financially inefficient. This required discipline to execute. In short, the intelligence from Avasta enabled FocusVision to get a reality check on future growth and profitability prospects, identified an opportunity to merge with a competitor, and ultimately come out well ahead of where they were in Spring 2020.

Key takeaway: many corporate and marketing strategies are invalidated when subjected to budget, timeline, and brand strength constraints and should be adjusted accordingly

we then moved on to Jerry Nichols who talked about

From Backroom to Boardroom – Driving Corporate Strategy Through Sales and Marketing Data Insights

Jerry focused on how crucial it was for his company Bottomline to make investments into getting to a single source of truth (SSOT) view of the customer base that the company had acquired to and was selling to - crucial as there had been many acquisitions with their own data architectures and operating processes.

Jerry was generous in walking the room through his use of Dun & Bradstreet , Snowflake , an Power BI to integrate with the rest of the diverse technology and marketing technology stack to create.

It all started with a 60-day alignment around what the company wanted to achieve and what was the state it was in. Over the subsequent 2+ years, Jerry and his team built and integrated across the organization to where now the corresponding tools and dashboards are in the Top-10 most frequently used in the company from across 1,500+ dashboards created within the company! They're also increasingly useful to make more accurate forecasting and planning decisions and reinforce what are responsible targets that the company can make for growth and market penetration.

This whole initiative was funded by Marketing because the marketing leadership realized they didn't know who they were marketing to, how could they know the impact of marketing spend - just imagine the benefit across the org from this initiative!

I loved Jerry's presentation because it is exactly what we've been encouraging and delivering at Avasta . What Jerry presented was very similar to the work we do under the radar with and for our clients to deliver responsible and objective insights to optimize corporate strategy that depends on the brand, marketing, sales customer, and product teams to execute.

Key takeaway: don't develop and execute strategy without a clear understanding of your customer and prospect base

we returned from lunch for a fascinating presentation by Shardul Wartikar on

Integrating AI with insights and research (my title for it as I missed the official one)

Shardul introduced the work done at Kantar in building their KaiA insights AI assistant solution that constrains the interaction with the assistant to both the unstructured and structured data fed into it to rapidly identify if questions can be answered or insights can be synthesized through the tool.

This opened up a broad conversation in the room about the role of AI in the room. Ben Trounson in the audience raised a great point about the challenges of AI being used with too high of a dependancy due to uncertainty in being able to TRUST the findings/recommendations from AI tools. The challenge is that many models do not have the citing/audit trail that historical publications would have, whether research or recommendations documentation - essentially, we're not necessarily able to figure out WHY the recommendation from an AI tool is made.

Shardul summarized things very well in managing expectations in use of AI tools or really, any research, that companies need to:

1) Identify meaningful data

2) determine how to convert data into insights

3) build some way to have predictiveness

This is to avoid an obsession I'm noticing in some AI circles to have a '0-100' solution where the AI output provides 'everything'. To the consensus in the room, AI is a tool to augment people. There was other topics covered, especially around understanding influencers that I'd recommend you watch Shardul's recording once its posted.

Key takeaway: AI is an accelerant for human-led insights activities, not a replacement for them.

We then moved on to some diverse discussion that was covered as part of Fran Cassidy's presentation

What do investment analysts really think about marketing?

This presentation sure caught the attention of the marketers and valuation folks in the room!

Fran presented content that was developed or sourced from Brand Finance, IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising), Les Binet, System1, and several others including surveying 200 British and American investment analysts conducted by BrandFinance on how they evaluated companies in B2C (Consumer) and B2B (Business-only) companies.

This summary will not do justice to what Fran covered so I highly recommend you watch the presentation and refer to the published reports she utilized.

One of the biggest takeaways was the change in how investment analysts surveyed in 2005 vs 2023 had changed how they looked at Advertising & Promotion expenditure (A&P for Brits, Advertising & Marketing spend for Americans).

Back in 2005 only 6% of analysts utilized this data in evaluating future performance and risks of companies. By 2023 this had become 80%!

Separately, she presented some of the financial analysis of the disconnect between the use of price discounting to raise revenue and market share vs having a stronger brand to pull customers forward to purchase products and services. A quick shorthand that was used was that a 5% price reduction would typically require an 18% increase in sales to offset the lost profitability at full price.

She also covered a substantial shift in analysts treatment of short term (tactical) vs long term (brand) investment into marketing. In 2023, the majority felt that long term marketing investments should be capitalized similarly to how R&D is allowed to.

To be frank this was such a great confirmation of the impairment that legacy accounting reporting impairs companies in making the best decisions. We're still in the trap of accounting norms allowing equipment, building, and several other select assets to be amortized over 5/10/25+ years because they're inherently expected to have a useful life that is that long (spoiler, frequently these fixed figures are way off both directions on the actual useful life - I've seen companies get 15+ years of revenue out of equipment that was fully amortized in 5).

This also corroborates a lot of the work that uncovered at the Licensing Executives Society (U.S.A. and Canada), Inc. when we developed the Intellectual Capital in the Boardroom Standard that calls for companies to get a responsible picture of future revenue, profitability, and risk drivers that aren't restricted to accounting methods only.

Key Takeaway: Analysts are actually very conscious of marketing spend and it does inform how they evaluate risk and future performance for companies, yet we clearly don't talk about this enough! Next time get your CEO and CFO to find out how many analysts cover your stock how they look at your marketing spend!

We then moved on to Alfred DuPuy, MBA presentation on

Sustainability as a Growth Driver

This was a really interesting presentation from Alfred at Brand Finance and the development of their Brand Sustainability Perceptions Index.

Combining research from 150,000 people globally across a broad group of brands and integration of data from CSRHub LLC, BrandFinance has carved out what share of the overall brand value can be attributed to being driven by sustainability initiatives, conscious or unconscious, across Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors also monitored by CSRHub.

What was interesting was the across-the-room discussion about the gap between perceived (insights from the global study) and actual (relative score from CSRHub) as a share of brand value. With Tesla as the brand in question, you can imagine opinions varied!

A challenge many of us faced, myself included, was that the sustainability figures as % of brand value were quite low in some cases. Reflecting on it a couple of days later, I realized I'm not as surprised. Anytime I've seen sustainability elements as a group of drivers affecting purchase and brand perception, these figures usually ended up being less than 10% of the buying population which shows you that how much we talk about sustainability isn't necessarily a match for how much people make purchasing decisions solely due to sustainability.

Key Takeaway: Sustainability as a component of brand value is definitely something worth monitoring and unpacking as ESG has entered formal reporting requirements across geographies and sectors, but the role on purchase and brand choice is critically underserved.

We wrapped up Day 1 with Joanna Seddon's Fireside Chat with Michelle Gibb from Mondelēz International.

This one had the room in shock because we learned a key fact about chocolate, our nostalgia, ingredients, licensing, etc. You'll see in the Bonus Takeaway below!

The dialogue back and forth with Michelle was fascinating as she focused on the importance and challenges of brand scorecard reporting within an organization whether around performance metrics or broader brand health.

A simple framework used to evaluate paths to growth is

1) More users

2) More usage

3) More value

To get there requires distribution and mental availability. Thus, any scorecard reporting needs to provide intelligence to make better decisions around these topics - anything else is redundant or impairing.

Michelle gave great advice for people trying to implement scorecards as strategic tools:

1. Identify the interrelationship between spend and causality and keep it simple
2. Design the scorecards to facilitate diagnosis and make decisions - reporting is not enough
3. Update your Brand Scorecards at least 2x per year, maybe 4x - any more and it is detrimental
4. Don't look at the scorecards frequently, they're supposed to monitor medium-to-long-term decision, not short term/tactical
5. Use a scorecard appropriate to the decision you're trying to make

I loved Michelle's guidance around brand scorecards. As someone who has created and used them in the past I've taught about them in my Finance of Brand Management graduate course at University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. Most of what I teach is about what not to do! I definitely learned from Michelle on how to convey the topic better going forward.

Key Takeaway: don't develop brand scorecards for reporting unless they're also a decision making tool, otherwise, it is a risk of wasting resources and time.

Bonus MAJOR Takeaway: Cadbury's in the USA is not owned by Mondelez, it is not the same formulation explaining the disconnect many in the room had had if they had eaten Cadbury's from different parts of the world. Temporarily many of us stopped being professionals at a business conference and became consumers lamenting and sharing notes! You had to be there to see how this sidetracked so many of us!

Moving on to Day 2, we had a fantastic panel on

Measuring Creativity

The panelists consisted of David W. Stewart, Latha Sarathy from the Association of National Advertisers and Ann Marie Kerwin from WARC.

Was the passion of marketers ever unleashed on this panel! Don't forget that marketers want to utilize creativity within their jobs and the content and discussion was fascinating - I won't be giving enough justice to the diversity of the conversation and nuance so watch the recording when it is up! What I can share are some fascinating recommendations and tidbits.

In essence, creativity is crucial to build brands and drive financial performance. This is not the same as 'creative' which is frequently a shorthand for advertising and marketing assets created by agencies and creative departments. It really is about what will have customers notice you from the massive noise of content they're bombarded by everyone these days.

Effective creativity is something that enables brands stand out, and build category equity. It is also not just about the visual expression which is what people frequently associate with creativity, it is about problem solving, how the brand/product/service is experienced, etc.

My personal takeaway is that good creativity including in product/service innovation is often the reason why brands succeed in becoming associated with the category as a shorthand, think Kleenex for facial tissue, 'googling' something instead of searching, "can I grab you a Starbucks?" instead of "Can I grab you a coffee?", etc.

Anne Marie introduced the concept of an effectiveness ladder which I unfortunately couldn't capture all of, but, in essence, it is about evaluating the creative asset development and campaigns against a top end benchmark of being an iconic campaign that shifts business results (my interpretation).

The discussion in the room was varied and deep. There was reference to Peter Field and work done with System1 ad testing of a 30 second 'advertisement' of cows eating grass which was in the 50th percentile of ad effectiveness (this means that 50% of genuine, intended ads were less effective driving action/recall, etc. than people watching cows eat grass for 30 seconds).

There was also the anecdote given about Liquid Death and their work with comics to create content vs going to agencies.

Again, I'm not giving this conversation enough justice and I encourage anyone to watch this video because it is a compelling example of how bringing measurement to something that is viewed as soft and fuzzy or intangible can actually be understood well enough to make much more effective business decisions.

Key Takeaway: Creativity in marketing is measurable and can be used to make much more sound investment and brand building decisions.

We then moved on to Marc Fischer's presentation

How to Leverage the Brand to Impress Your Investors

Now, I need to say here, I was looking forward to this from the moment I saw this headline. I've had the privilege of knowing Marc for a dozen years and I've always walked away permanently smarter and thinking differently after his presentations.

Did he live up to my lofty expectations? Yes. In fact, he blew them away.

Why is this?

Marc delivered an exceptional reconciliation of how to look at the role of brand as an enterprise value driver but from a lens that was almost exclusively a financial quant approach in his most recent academic piece.

Watch his presentation when it is up. It will make you a better business professional.

Using Harley-Davidson Motor Company as an example, Marc evaluated the financial performance of the company over many years and compared it to publicly available brand valuation data. The insights into the brand being under-leveraged was immensely insightful.

In fact, his broader analysis identified that companies are, on average, only leveraging 35% of the strength and value of their brand in driving future business performance.

Marc led the attendees through a exceptional summary of the recommended frameworks and corresponding heuristics to use to diagnose how the brand is performing. This was exciting for me because many of his recommendations align with what we execute in our work at Avasta and the fundamentals I teach at the University of Toronto from my contributions to the ISO 20671 Brand Evaluation Standard.

What I most appreciate about Marc's presentation is how we wrapped up and summarized a simple calculation of where to start in leveraging your brand for your company by evaluating how it is performing financially. These calculations apply to both publicly listed and private companies! Watch his presentation when it becomes available to get the full walk through.

1. If your profitability is Excellent: your company's ROIC is better than 2X your company's WACC - focus on growth
2. If your profitability is Strong: your company's ROIC is about 2X WACC - focus on growth and profitability
3. If your profitability is Acceptable: your company's WACC < ROIC and your ROIC is less than 2X WACC - focus on profitability
4. If your profitability is Unacceptable: your company's ROIC < WACC, then focus on profitability through cost cutting.

These are primarily financial terms and calculations but these are the background of how the influence of the finance function within and outside a company places upon evaluating the outcomes of corporate strategy and financial results.

I can't emphasize how critical it is to understand the above concept as ANY executive, marketing, sales, product, etc. This is, rightfully or not, the air that companies breathe due to the collective strength that these principles have in guiding financial markets.

Key Takeaway: Go and talk to your finance department and CFO regarding the above calculations and figure out where your company is and how your company thinks through these 'norms'.

We then had the conference wrap up through a summary of MASB's initiatives on the Economic Impact of Marketing project led by Nikhil Gharekhan and the Brand Evaluation Standards development led by Erich Decker-Hoppen .

In brief, these initiatives, practices, and standards are crucial for marketing and finance leaders to have a competitive advantage in the market.

Take advantage of the generosity of members sharing from their developments, failures and successes, and get access to training and knowledge that is unavailable in whole in any academic or executive training program.

Key Takeaway: Join MASB by talking to Frank Findley and Joanna Seddon