Now that I have published several books, I am often asked how long it takes to write one. The normal answer is between eighteen months and three years. This one, though, took thirty-five years.

Its tone was set by an incident which happened when, in my mid twenties, I was asked to be executive assistant to the Deputy Chairman of BT. He (the former Deputy Chair of Barclays Bank) was brought into the company by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, to run the privatization. I was his only assistant and was closely involved in the marketing of the float. There followed eighteen months of demanding work with a project that set all kinds of firsts. Afterwards, though, the newly privatized firm had to set up several radically new approaches. One was a mechanism to assess and approve capital projects, a level of spend which dominated the new company because of its extensive backbone network. My boss wanted to set up a “capital appraisal committee” to ensure that more commercially orientated decisions were made at the acquisition and spend of capital investment. He asked me to investigate “discounted cash flow analysis” and “internal rate of return” in order to draft the methods by which this capital spend (which at the time was massive) would be evaluated and approved.

I spent several hours with internal and external accountants, and academics, on this interesting project. At some point it struck me, though, that these concepts (like many management tools) were merely a way to structure the thinking of executives in order to spend shareholder funds to best effect. They looked objective, numerical, and detailed; yet they still called for the judgement of the senior team on where they would allocate scarce resources; they were concepts designed to help reach better decisions. As a result, I went back to source and, with the advice of much more experienced people, set up mechanisms to dramatize the choices, based on the analysis. In other words, we understood the strengths and weaknesses of the tool and adjusted it to suit our circumstances.

Later, I went back into marketing. As I did my postgraduate diploma and MBA I went into concepts like the Boston Box and the Ansoff Matrix in greater depth. I never forgot my former boss’s approach, though, and asked myself about both the sources and the use of these concepts to help spend shareholder funds wisely. As my career progressed I used many of them but I have been shocked by some of the things I have found. This book is the result.

Walk into any reputable book shop and you would think that marketing and sales people are really stupid. There are books on the “principles of marketing”, “introduction to marketing”, “marketing for dummies”, “new rules” on various bits of marketing and, most irritating of all, a plethora of opinionated nonsense on the latest whizzo ideas. Admittedly, most marketing people find (as do many others) that, after university, their early jobs contain activities which are nothing at all to do with the concepts they learnt. They might be absorbed in creating email blasts, researching latest fads on the web, preparing PowerPoint presentations for senior people (some of which are never used), or putting out the chairs for events. Some rarely see a marketing plan or a portfolio analysis until they progress in their career.

Yet there comes a time when they might need to express an idea or a new strategy to their boss, their colleagues or, more worryingly, to a customer. It is at this time that many reach for models and concepts taught when they were at college. And then there is a problem. Sometimes business problems are complex and cannot be summarized into a sound bite, one page of A4, or a Twitter comment. Sometimes, “key outcomes” and anodyne bullet points simply will not do. Sometimes, professionals have to be thoughtful, careful, smart, and judicious. It is at those times that the depth, credibility, and effectiveness of marketing concepts come under the microscope. This book is intended to help with those occasions (because not much else does).

Contrary to popular belief, there are thousands upon thousands of people, all over the world, who try to use ideas, tools, and techniques to express the thinking behind marketing initiatives in order to get better decisions for shareholders. Like other professionals, marketing specialists use a range of concepts and models in their work. This book contains descriptions of a number of those that are referred to most commonly (and one or two that I have found useful which are less well known). It does not attempt to be an exhaustive review of all the techniques to which marketers can resort nor does it attempt to provide a detailed description, or critique, of each one. And, it certainly doesn’t attempt to make a fortune by joining in on the latest fad or fashion in thinking. Quite the opposite. It tries to understand the historical use of enduring marketing principles and practice. It aims to point to the origin, context, and limitations of some of the better known ideas that are currently used in business.

The book describes each tool or concept and its source. Further reading and quotes are included to help those who want to delve deeper when they actually come to use them. Above all it asks: “How useful and relevant is this concept? Will it improve decision making? Does the damn thing have any credibility and does it work?”

I have to thank a number of people who have read and checked the text; and picked me up on my many errors! In academia: Professor David Carson, University of Ulster, Professor Adrian Payne, University of New South Wales, Professor Silvia Hodges, Fordham Law School, New York, Professor Paul Fifield, University of Southampton, Professor Robert Shaw, Cass Business School Oxford, and Charles Nixon of Cambridge Marketing College. Those working in practical marketing jobs: Tim Westall, founding partner of April Strategy, Simon Phillips, marketing director of Grosvenor Estates, Simon Esenberger and Hamish Pringle, CEO of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. Any remaining errors and omissions are mine, but the text is much better for their support.

Thanks also to those who provided case studies, including: Rae Sedel of Russell Reynolds, Tony Rogers of Interoute, David Munn of ITSMA, Mike Aubrey Bugg of Age Concern, Vincent Rousselet and Philip Oliver of Fujitsu, Barbara Jenkins of Microsoft, Ginnie Leatham and Ashley Stockwell of Virgin Media, Julie Meyers, Tom Dolan and Robert Corbishley of Xerox, Kevin Bishop of IBM, Peter Snelling of Michelin, Sir Paul Judge, Diao Yunfeng and Zhung Bin of Haier, Natasha Clay of Diageo, Jonathan Brayne of Allen & Overy, Nichola Murphy and Natasha Jackson of River Publishing. All of these people have been genuinely interested in giving their experience to the marketing community to help improve the profession’s understanding.

I should especially like to thank Dawn Southgate at the library of the Chartered Institute of Marketing for her patient support and, as usual, the Wiley team (who I must have driven completely mad by now!). Thanks also to Lucy Sinclair for her help with text preparation.

I cannot thank, but nonetheless owe a debt of gratitude to, the many people over the years who, with a furrowed brow, have puzzled with me over one or other technique en route to a presentation on some matter to our employers. Smart people working for BT, Unisys, Ericsson, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Blakes Marketing, Allen & Overy, and many more have honed our communication of some dusty concept or another. To them all: many thanks. This is, very much, our voice to our profession.

Laurie Young

Winter 2010