Marketing Excellence
— Winning companies reveal the secrets of their success
By Hugh Burkitt and John Zeally. Published by John Wiley UK, 2006.
373 pages (hard cover). RRP $68.95. ISBN 13 978-0-470-06027-8 (HB)
and 10 470-06027-1 (HB).
Marketing case studies are always of interest to marketers, but too often they are emasculated by commercial-in-confidence issues. Marketing Excellence is a solid publication that deals out the detail as well as the strategy.
The book has been prepared by the UK Marketing Society; senior author Hugh Burkitt is the Society’s CEO and its examples are drawn from the Society’s Marketing Excellence Awards from 2002 to 2006.
The book is organised around award categories – customer insight, new brand launch, sustaining the brand promise, etc. There are sections on internal marketing and developing marketing capabilities (inside an organisation) and even one on CSR-related projects (Doing Well by Doing Good).
Each section has two to four case studies and includes a useful level of detailed results – sales, market share, customer loyalty measures, etc, often with graphs, tables and charts.
There are some riveting stories, such as how Tesco.com became the second biggest online retailer by meticulous attention to finding out what works for the customer and what makes it easier for the customer to shop online (for example, having a ‘favourites’ section where frequently bought items are listed on the opening screen and may be easily selected).
Or how Toyota UK launched the ‘next generation’ Corolla and moved it from being a price-driven, lower-choice vehicle (Ford Focus and VW Golf were market leaders) to a new market positioning and substantial increase in market share by building the concept of pride in ownership.
Or even how Microsoft UK used the Ricky Gervais character, David Brent (of The Office), to drive an internal marketing campaign. Sounds counterintuitive? You will need to see it in the book.
There are many big brands but also some smaller ones such as Green & Black’s, a marketer of organic dark chocolate products that built sales from £4.5 million in 2002 to £29 million in 2005 by moving from a strongly ‘organic’ positioning to one that built the luxurious qualities of its product. Green & Black’s used innovative methods, such as offering a sample pack with a small fortified wine at a music festival and providing 70-gram bars to British Airways’ first and business-class passengers.
However, what sets this book apart from some other case study publications is an introduction that draws together common approaches and characteristics of the most successful marketers, summarised in three groups:
- High performers live in a measurement culture.
- High performers invest in the right skills and capabilities.
- High performers measure intelligently and comprehensively.
Put simply in three statements, they may seem unremarkable (“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”), but Burkitt and Zeally detail what lies beneath these precepts in a tightly written eight-page summary.
Marketing Excellence underlines how important it is that all marketers embrace quantitative assessment of their work in a comprehensive manner.
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