Nick Wreden’s ProfitBrand tackles the oldest and most intractable marketing question: accountability. How do we know it is working? He calls for “quantifiable benchmarks” of return on investment and profitability. “Without profitability, ultimately there is no brand, no matter how great the buzz or creative image.”
Mr. Wreden takes ambitious steps in explaining the significance of “sustainability” in customer relationships and the value of measuring marketing spending to establish accountability and profitability. “Sustainability is critical, since by some estimates 80-95 per cent of products fail to become brands,” he writes. “Sustainability is also important because more than two-thirds of purchases are one-off buys. Only a brand focused on sustainability will take the steps that lead to second, third or even a lifetime of purchases.”
On measurement, the book takes the reader through charts on how to view profitability by customer, and how to think of marketing investments to attract and retain profitable customers. It provides step-by-step guidelines on collecting data, consolidating data, and tracking customer retention. It even suggests compensation strategies that reflect the importance of retention. This is a book that runs the numbers but also recognizes the difficulty of data capture, and offers tactics to overcome obstacles.
Whether all this works remains to be seen, but Mr. Wreden’s book is a landmark attempt to answer the right question at the right time. ProfitBrand is also well written and well organized, with useful “take-aways” at the end of each chapter. – Kenneth Roman
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