Marketing Effectiveness Conclave 2007
- February 10, 2007, SPJIMR Auditorium, Mumbai

As an academic Institution which believes in influencing practice, the S P Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR) hopes to provide a platform for sharing of best practices across marketers and stimulate new thinking on how to measure and isolate the long term impact of marketing initiatives on business.

The SPJIMR Marketing Effectiveness Conclave is organised on the 2nd Saturday of February every year. This year the Conclave was organized on February 10, 2007 by SPJIMR in association with Economic Times. agencyfaqs was the web partner and CNBC TV18 the media partner for the event. Click here for detailed Agenda

Conclave Highlights

One of the most pressing issues facing CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers), the world over, is the question of measuring effectiveness of marketing initiatives and demonstrating impact using financial measures like ROI. This issue has been the top research priority at the Marketing Science Institute for the last six years. In today's times of increasing competitiveness and tighter budget controls a marketing manager is likely to face constant pressure to produce results and justify marketing spends. ROI and EVA are no longer terms that only the finance guy looks at.

Speaking at the Marketing Effectiveness Conclave organized by the S.P.Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai on February 10, 2007, Mr. Ranjiv Singh (CMO, Microsoft), said that the need today is for more accountability through objective based measurement and better aligned marketing disciplines, processes and tools. Companies will have to create more holistic way of acquiring customers by integrated marketing communication process and then measuring the success of the campaigns through devices like campaign response management and sales.

An excellent example of measuring marketing success was presented by Mr. Mukherjee from Bank of Baroda. He spoke about how the impact of the Bank's initiative on rejuvenating its brand identity can be seen in the fact that the plummeting market share was arrested and the bank regained the No.3 position among peer banks, moving up two places in terms of KPIs. Bank of Baroda has won the SPJIMR Marketing Impact Award 2007 for this initiative.

The consumer of today is impacted by many factors and isolating the impact of marketing actions has gained Centre stage in the opinion of Mr. Nehal Medh (India Manager, Ipsos). There is a need for marketers to ensure regular marketing audits with the use of strategic reviews and marketing financials review. He cautioned however that measuring the marketing impact is necessary but very difficult because of the changing business environment, changing customers and blurred boundaries of business decision making.

Commenting on the future of branding and role of marketing in the 21st century, Mr. Kiran Khalap, (Co-founder, Chlorophyll) said that corporate brands will become the focus in the 21st century because of the 'I Age' of Information, Internet, Interactivity, Internationalism and Instantaneity in the opinion of. Some of the future challenges for marketing include risk of employee non-alignment, societal non-alignment, marketing non-alignment, investor non-alignment, trader non-alignment and competition non-alignment.

One of the most pressing issues for marketers today is the fact that intangible assets which are contributing an increasing share of a company's value are not reflected in the financial measures. Most financial measures treat marketing as expenditure rather than investment. Even ROI is a more retrospective tool and gives a snapshot view, completely ignoring the impact of marketing on the future. Though important, ROI is more an efficiency measure rather and an effectiveness measure said Prof. Ruppal Sharma (SPJIMR). She feels that marketers need to move beyond the focus on sales and market shares to analyzing their impact on margins, working capital and cash flows. Metrics can apply to marketing but it will take time, determination and money to fine tune the measurement process.

Prof. Mithileshwar Jha for IIM Bangalore, however feels that the focus should not just be on return on investment but there should be a new paradigm of marketing called the developmental marketing where the interest is human happiness.

In terms of return on investment there are two aspects of impact and efficiency and both are important. There are tools to create impact and measure efficiency and the difference is created by the passion, which is an essential element. Companies are getting more responsible about effective marketing but there is an emphasis to make business sense ensuring that the advertising expenditure translates to monetary returns. Altruistic and spiritual beliefs are still not applicable in the business scenario and the bottom line continues to be profit for companies.

The key question that emerged from the SPJIMR Marketing Effectiveness Conclave was whether the stakeholders are given enough metrics to judge how efficiently the companies are using the money for marketing . One metric which all agreed is critical for demonstrating marketing impact in both short term and long term is the impact of marketing activities on the lifetime value of the customer.