A book chapter I wrote with Jonathan Knowles and Moeen Butt has recently come out in the Review of Marketing Research (vol 18). In our chapter, we sought to give marketers a better understanding of accounting, specifically financial accounting. What then are the marketing implications of financial accounting? Keeping Score Marketers are trying to work…
Category: MASB
TV Still Matters For Advertising
I am involved with the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB). An aim of this organization is to bring more rigor to marketing measurement. Top members of MASB took a lead in examining the effectiveness and efficiency of TV advertising. Their conclusion, TV still matters. Following Up On Past Research The authors followed up on prior…
Marketing, Cash Flow and Shareholder Wealth
Marketers have traditionally been pretty poor at showing why marketing matters to shareholders. In my experience marketers often just assume that marketing is important. They then just expect everyone else to believe it. Instead we really need to consider marketing, cash flow and shareholder wealth and how these fit together. Marketing Impact On The Firm…
Proving The Value Of Marketing
Over the next couple of weeks I will consider ideas from a paper coming out in Marketing Science. [This post was written in 2018]. I wrote the paper with a former PhD student, Moeen Butt. This looks at the use of a metric called Tobin’s q. This has been used in papers claiming to be…
Why Financial Statements Fail “Digital” Companies
The way marketing features accounting statements is pretty awful. I have noted this often. Many of the issues raised are, however, applicable outside marketing. They occur with a wide range of intangible assets. Vijay Govindarajan and his colleagues, therefore, look at the providers of accounting for “digital” companies. They ask: Why Financial Statements Fail “Digital”…
More On Accounting’s Failure To Deal With Intangibles
Accounting’s failure to deal with intangibles is a major problem in business. Marketers, and others, need to engage with financial accountants to find a better way. Problems in accounting statements Feng Gu and Baruch Lev give more details on the problems with financial accounting in their recent piece for the Financial Analysts Journal. They argue…
Measuring A Technological Revolution
Some have begun to make the argument that there is a technological revolution. A move towards intangible assets. How does one go about measuring a technological revolution? A Problem With Accounting Corrado and Hulten highlight a major problem in the way accounts are created. This applies to both corporate and national accounts. A basic idea…
Not Real Is Not The Same As Hard To Measure
Haskel and Westlake’s new book, Capitalism without Capital, is on my reading list for the new year. For now I’ll just concentrate on comments made in The Economists’ review of the book. The key point I want to make is that not real is not the same as hard to measure Intangible Assets Are On…
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. These have included Michael Bloomberg, Mary Schapiro (former SEC chair), and Laura Tyson (former London Business School Dean). This has helped them raise their profile. They have been working on a sustainable standard when accounting for…
Marketing And Finance Working Together
Charlotte Rogers has a fascinating practitioner article on the Marketing/Finance interface published in Marketing Week. This is a positive piece. It outlines how marketing and finance groups are collaborating more. Much of the advice is sensible. For example, UKTV brought a finance person into the media review team. This meant the person was able to…
