I find the discussions of the role of social purpose in marketing fascinating. Unlike a lot of marketing discussions this can make it into popular debates. Owen Jones, a UK Guardian (left leaning) opinion journalist gave his view on brands and the culture wars. Jones starts off by noting that when Marks and Spencer (the…
Category: Advertising
Advertising Budgeting and Managerially Relevant Research
Academic research occasionally desires to be practical. Various journals therefore often have sections that allow for the results of practical work with managers where there aren’t significant theoretical contributions. In the past the Marketing Science journal has published work under “Applications”. In this vein Doyle and Sanders did some work on multiproduct advertising budgeting. The…
What does marketing do?
People don’t necessarily understand marketing Haskel and Westlake have a great new book — Capitalism without Capital. In this they highlight a major problem that they see. The problem they note is that business has changed but the way we account for it (mostly at the national level in their focus) hasn’t. Accounting systems aren’t set…
A Sustainable Standard When Accounting For Marketing
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) seems to have been remarkably successful. They have recruited some well-known board members, including Michael Bloomberg, Mary Schapiro (former SEC chair), and Laura Tyson (former London Business School Dean). This has helped them raise their profile. SASB issue best practice guidance on how firms should report their activities. Interestingly…
A marketing man’s thoughts on ads and information
Following on from last week’s blog I wanted to note a few other great features of Matthew Willcox’s The Business of Choice. On a theoretical side he discusses the problem of too much information. I found his take appealing. He notes that scholars have long worried about the potential of information overload. In the digital…
Buying and Selling Attention
Tim Wu’s The Attention Merchants is an interesting book. I must confess I enjoyed the first half more than the end. The end of the book is a pretty conventional view of where we are now. I don’t think anyone will be surprised to learn that Google is grabbing a load of data and some…