HBR ARTICLES SUMMARY

I've just read 2 HBR articles on marketing and more, and I'm actually amazed by the marketing magic and logic. Here are the extracts of the 2 famous marketing articles from Harward Business Review.

DECISION-DRIVEN MARKETING

The article ‘Decision-driven marketing’ by Aditya Joshi and Eduardo Gimenez is an interesting read dealing about the marketing concepts and nuances that are of par importance in addition to the normal sales and general marketing. Marketers have always had to build brands, create demand, promote sales, and help their companies earn customers’ loyalty. But today’s turbulent environment means they must play critical new roles. 

As the marketing pioneers have discovered, a more fruitful approach is to identify the critical decisions involved in successfully marketing a company’s products or services and focus on improving the effectiveness of those decisions. In essence, the leaders of these companies inject more discipline into decision-making processes—clarifying roles for marketing and other relevant functions and establishing decision criteria. Some companies also need to consider the organizational changes. Typically three different categories of marketing-related decisions were considered to be the crux factor: Strategy and planning, execution decisions and operations and infrastructure decisions. Even I.T as a functional tool to help marketing is evolving nowadays. Ample examples are given to uphold these requirements. 

To conclude, the article asserts on the fact that apart from general sales and marketing, various other functions need to be identified and worked upon, and organizations that identify the most important decisions and learn how to make them more effectively will be on their way to better and more powerful marketing.

THE ULTIMATE MARKETING MACHINE

The article ‘The Ultimate Marketing machine’ by Marc de Swaan Arons, Frank van den Driest, and Keith Weed is an interesting read on what marketers do to engage customers and the change that has evolved beyond recognition. Tools and strategies that were cutting-edge just a few years ago are fast becoming obsolete, and new approaches are appearing every day. 

The authors have described a framework for how marketing leaders can build a high-performance marketing organization and thus creating an ultimate marketing machine. Marketing leaders are effectively connecting marketing to other functions and business strategy, inspiring their organizations by engaging everyone in the brand’s purpose, focusing and aligning marketing around a few key priorities, and building internal capabilities through extensive training. A few brand examples are also given where a single brand purpose was developed rather than the decentralized approach, and such approaches have always worked their ways.

To conclude, the article enunciates that marketers must look into customer insight, impregnate their brand with a brand purpose and deliver a rich customer experience. Invest in training, connect with the masses and develop and build a brand purpose to deliver this rich customer experience.