Marketing and Finance: Creating Shareholder Value

Foreword from the First Edition

by Sir Michael Perry, GBE

A few years back I was asked to address an Economist conference for senior marketing people on the questions – ‘Why do so few CEOs of major UK companies come from a marketing background? Do marketing people make bad CEOs?’

To start with I was puzzled by the questions. I had spent thirty nine years working in a company, Unilever, where marketing was virtually the default background for the CEOs of successful operating companies. Every such subsidiary had a Marketing Director on its board as well, whose voice carried more weight than anyone's when it came to business strategy. Even at parent company level, of the ten Executive Chairmen of Unilever plc since the company was formed in 1929, four were marketing men – more than from any other discipline.

A little research soon revealed that this pattern did not by any means hold true for most FTSE 100 companies. Worse still, too many of them did not even have a marketing person on their executive boards. That really got me worrying. In such companies who represents the interests of customers? Where is the analysis of markets and market segmentation done? What about the detailed understanding of competitors and sustaining competitive advantage? Where does the prime responsibility lie for optimizing crucially important shareholder values such as intangible assets – like brands, or good-will? No wonder so many companies run into difficulties.

In the absence of a Marketing Director, ...