Today we turn to a history lesson on brand valuation. The story is of Hovis and the valuation of brands. Hovis And The Valuation of Brands Rank Hovis McDougall, a big U.K. food manufacturer in the 1980s decided to record the value of its brands on its balance sheet. This included its internally generated brands. (These are…
Category: Marketing Metrics
Capitalizing Spending On Intangibles
My final comment on Lev and Gu’s The End of Accounting discusses their idea of how to improve financial reporting. This is a bit more controversial to my mind but worth considering. They suggest capitalizing spending on intangibles. Too Many Estimates? The authors argue that accounting uses too many estimates. As such, although the authors…
Who Has An Interest In Changing Accounting?
Baruch Lev and Feng Gu, accounting professors, ask a simple question. Why are managers and auditors so blasé about accounting for intangibles? Lev and Gu, 2016, page 90 Intangibles are a mess in financial accounting. Everyone knows there are obvious problems. So who has an interest in changing accounting? Intangible Assets And The Concept Of Matching…
Financial Information And Stock Prices
For the next few weeks I’ll discuss Lev and Gu’s new book on the problems of financial accounting, The End of Accounting. Here the authors discuss financial information and stock prices. Basically, the relevance of accounting information to investment decisions. Financial Information And Stock Prices: Little Connection This book sets out the case that financial accounting…
What Is Wrong With This CLV Formula?
Peter Fader and Bruce Hardie are experts in understanding the value of customer relationships. They have offered advice on problems with CLV calculations, especially those taught in MBA programs. They ask: “What’s Wrong With This CLV Formula?” Five Issues They outline five issues. Many of these are things to bear in mind that we might…
The WAITA Model — How To Decide Upon Marketing Metrics
I recently published a short piece for WARC Best Practice on “How to set marketing metrics effectively”. The basic idea behind the piece is an explanation of how to decide upon what marketing metrics to use. This work introduces a new acronym that I’ve produced called the WAITA model. Hopefully, this is easy to remember. Why call…
The History of Reporting on Brands
Roger Sinclair shows the value of experience when he surveys the history of reporting on brands. (Roger made a large number of contributions to the field of marketing accountability. I had the honor of presenting Roger’s family with the Blair Award for Marketing Accountability at the 2019 MASB Summit see here). When Firm’s Reported Their Brands…
Understanding Brand Valuation
Marc Fischer explains common methods of brand valuation. His work is useful in understanding brand valuation. Different Methods Of Brand Valuation One of the problems he highlights is that there are so many methods. Different companies have their own proprietary valuation systems. He groups these into three main approaches; a cost-based approach, a market-based approach, and an…
The Marketing Finance Partnership
Jim Meier, (an executive at MillerCoors), is an expert on getting marketing and finance to work together. Let’s call this the marketing finance partnership. He has written a fascinating chapter on the problems of doing this. Perceptions Of Marketing The portrayal of marketers through the eyes of finance people is amusing. Still, it isn’t pretty….
CLV In The CPG Industry
V Kumar (the editor of the Journal of Marketing) and student Sarang Sunder have undertaken a review of the use, and potential use, of Customer Lifetime Value, CLV in the CPG industry. (CPG being consumer packaged goods, think P&G, General Mills). Challenges For CPG Marketers The authors talk about the problems that CPG marketers face…
