John Elkington gave us the idea of the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) in 1994. In 2018 he proposed that the idea be recalled for a retooling. Things hadn’t worked out as he hoped. The Triple Bottom Line The idea behind the Triple Bottom Line is simple. Rather than fixating on financial performance alone, the bottom…
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A Roadmap For Marketing Metrics
Paul Magill and Christine Moorman shared a roadmap for marketing metrics in April’s Harvard Business Review. Their overarching aim is to elevate the way marketers look at metrics. The authors don’t want marketing assessed only at the campaign level — “did this ad campaign work?” Better to focus at higher levels, “what is marketing delivering…
Sustainable Marketing Strategy Cases
This page contains a number of free sustainable marketing strategy cases. These cover a variety of topics in business. For more on sustainable marketing strategy see here. Introductory Sustainable Marketing Strategy Cases These are simple cases designed to set the stage for discussions of business, purpose, and sustainability. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals This…
Putting Finance And Marketing Together
Dave Stewart has written a book packed with details of the financial impact of marketing. He surveys a large number of topics extremely connected to what I write about in this blog. (This probably isn’t too surprising. Dave is chair of MASB, which I am heavily involved in). What then is good advice for putting…
CEOs And Sustainability
Alan Murray (CEO of Fortune Media) has a book on how business is engaging more with social issues. There are a lot of good points in there that help to illustrate business in 2022. So what can he tell us about CEOs and Sustainability? First, The Bad Points Broadly speaking I am on board with…
The Limits Of Math Models
The Limits To Growth is a fascinating piece of scientific history. It was a 1972 report by the Club Of Rome. Yes, they did seem to actively want to fuel conspiracy theorists’ fantasies with their enigmatic name. (They still exist by the way and seemed to have moved to Switzerland, which seems a little odd…
Another Total Q Mystery
I am fascinated by attempts to replace Tobin’s Q as a firm performance metric with Total Q. Both metrics are not fit for purpose. One of the most interesting things is just how terrible the arguments in favor of Total Q as a firm performance metric are. I recently highlighted problems in Du and Osmonbekovās “Direct effect of…
Building Allies For Sustainability
Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce has many elements of a classic. It influenced a lot of future thinking, and indeed action. For example, Interface Carpets moves to sustainability were informed by Hawken’s arguments. One of the things that struck me about Hawken’s book (I read the revised 2010 edition) is how he has positive,…
Viewing Customers As Investments
Every now and then it is worth looking back at how earlier generations thought of marketing. (Or anything else really). There can be a lot to learn — although you often have to cope with some old-fashioned ideas and terminology. An interesting early piece is by Edward C. Bursk which was about viewing customers as…
Sustainable Corporate Responsibility
Caroline Ditlev-Simonsen has a guide to Sustainable Corporate Responsibility. This covers much of what anyone could hope to read as a summary/introduction to the topic. The author covers the ethics of sustainability, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, stakeholder management, and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) reporting amongst other things. There is a lot of interesting…