Customer Reviews

Marketing Champions: Practical Strategies for Improving Marketing's Power, Influence, and Business Impact

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All of the innovative marketing strategies and best practices cannot be successful without a well-run organization. "Marketing Champions" provides marketing professionals with the road map to take a more prominent leadership role in driving business performance. This book will change the mindset of marketers as they better align with corporate objectives and forge productive alliances throughout the company. The authors do an excellent job of presenting an approach to win-win relationships for all players. Good tips and structured questions are included to help you easily put key concepts into practice.

"Marketing Champions" is a must-read for marketing executives ready to make their organizations one of the most respected and influential contributors to business growth. It is the critical guide for taking ownership of financial and strategic outcomes, breaking down operational barriers, and unlocking the company's full profit potential. Not only will this help CMO tenures last longer than the typical 23 months, but it will better position CMOs to compete for the CEO role.

If you are tired of the label, "promotions guy or gal", then this book is for you because it expands on the true definition and role of a marketer. Many companies like to put marketing in the advertising, promotions, communications box, and this is where most marketing professionals reside in the organization. However, this is a recipe for marginalization.

A true marketing professional masters promotions, advertising and the like, but expands the marketing role to own the customer relationship and experience. For marketing professionals to be taken seriously and have a "seat" in executive circles they must be concerned with terms not usually associated with marketers like cash flow, earnings, shareholder value, and reputation. Even more important, marketing must contribute to corporate and business strategy with daily input and research from having a firm pulse on customer wants and future needs.

Roy Young, Allen Weiss and David Stewart show that marketing can and should focus on more than just the "Promotion" aspect of marketing. Chapters detail how to work closely with others in the organization from sales, operations, finance, R&D and even the executive office.

The book has very limited treatment of many of the technologies (CRM, data warehousing, analytics etc...) that help enable the measurement of marketing results. But overall, its message is too powerful to not give the book five stars.

As a marketer, if you like staying in the promotions box and limiting your career opportuniites then don't read this book. If, however, you have aspirations of the executive suite, or at least the invitation to executive level discussions, then pick up this book and dive in!

Wow! I wish I had read this book many years ago when I was starting out in my marketing career. Marketing Champions shines the light on the challenges marketing organizations face in building respect for the discipline inside the walls of the company. Marketing is one of the most misunderstood functions in US corporations today; yet it is one of the most powerful and pervasive. This book enables marketers (entry level to CMO) to look at marketing from the outside in. It helps them to 'brand' marketing within their companies. It provides insights that make marketers more successful - by enabling them to build long-lasting relationships with colleagues. If every marketer in your organization reads this book, the value and power of the marketing department will increase tremendously. This is a must-read for any marketing professional who wants to be successful and professionally satisfied.

Marketers need to stop asking for a seat at the table, and start earning it. Marketing Champions explains why Marketing doesn't have a seat today, and offers clear steps to get there. It's the leg-up you've been looking for.

Here's why I like this book.

It really looks at all the "customers" of marketing and gives you the tools and resources to ensure you can add value to them and gain their commitment and buy-in to the marketing agenda, which is inextricably linked to the company's agenda and growth plan. We're talking about the C-suite and internal/external customers.

I love the sections around finance and the language of the boardroom, which is all about cash flow, risk/return, and KPIs/metrics. If marketing is ever going to get a seat at the (boardroom) table, it needs to be fluent in the language of its key constituencies, just like it is with external customers.
Marketers know that if their messages are not aligned with the critical issues of their prospects/customers, they are unlikely to resonate and gain traction. The same with internal customers (e.g., CEO, CFO, VP of Sales, Operations, etc.).

Lastly, I like the last few chapters around uncovering and vetting new opportunities. If marketers can help their company to increase their top-line and the magnitude and velocity of cash flows, there is no reason for them to worry if their company downsizes. It's only when marketing is seen on the periphery that marketers need to worry. Unfortunately, that's all too common today. The corporate shears often prune those "branches"
farthest from the trunk or the core (aka, revenue or cash flow distance).

This book can help all business people to re-assess how they are perceived internally and externally and how to drive some new, and more positive, perceptions (and value) by focusing on what each audience cares about.

Marketing Champions. Practical strategies for improving marketing's power, influence, and business impact. Young, Weiss, & Stewart. 2006. ISBN 9780471744955 This book is a distillation of hundreds of articles, case studies and research papers from MarketingProfs.com. If you have not checked it out, this website is home to some very valuable and pragmatic marketing ideas, info and research. In any other year this book would be my choice of marketing book of the year. I classify it as the getting things done in marketing book!It is a landmark book in that in one volume you have the best advice for marketing your value to clients, internal executives, internal groups and your own group. The section on how to talk in business terms is worth the price of the book. I recommend it to CEOs, CFOs, VPs R&D, Sales and Marketing as well as those just graduating from school. Its also a great read! A library keeper and re-reader.

I cannot tell you how big a difference the `speaking the language' strategies made. The silent pauses down the end of the phone when I took a particular marketing or strategic idea and translated it according to intangible assets, goodwill, when I talked about the inventory turnover and leverage, actually spoke volumes!!!

I was also able to connect the goals the CEO has for the new company we are launching and connect them directly to downstream and upstream marketing to drive profit growth and top-line profit.

The relief I could here in my CEO's voice was awesome... I know I've gained credibility and put in place the beginnings of a great marketing foundation.

THANK YOU!!! I knew I needed to be doing what you say in the book.... I just didn't know HOW. You make it clear and doable!!!

I like this book because it tells you exactly what to do to build relationships with your organizational counterparts and, in effect, conduct the internal marketing needed to demonstrate the value of your external marketing efforts. The subtitle says it all: "Practical strategies for improving marketing's power, influence and business impact." Great stuff.

Marketing Champions is unlike any other marketing book I have read because it outlines internal and external issues and provides solutions. Other books are much more theoretical. This book also details steps on how to progress in a marketing career, from promotions to internal strife between marketing and sales as well as marketing and executive management.

I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to become a better marketer in today's fiercly competitive market.

I'm not sure just how much thought went into this book. It's also very hard to figure out how many hours the authors Roy A. Young, Allen M. Weiss and David W. Stewart contributed to the over all preparation of the concepts put into this book.

But after countless hours reading the chapters of this book before the advance uncorrected proof, scrutinizing the first five chapters with heavy introspection and experimentation of the ideas I can tell you the following: It would take you countless personal hours, unmeasurable amounts of interviews, and the experience of CEO's from dozens of companies to amass the wealth of knowledge that you can easily pull out of this book.

So would you want to try to attempt what these authors have personally done for you in order to give you insight beyond the competition? If you wouldn't do you dream of failing in your endeavours as a marketing advisor, consultant or company? Well I'm very proud to say that some of the above endorsements from Phil Kotler and Seth Godin are more than advertising endorsements by some of the leading marketing experts. But they are geniune endorsements that really help you to recognize how rare this book is. More importantly how different the perspective of these three gentleman really are.

For example their input about what is a marketing compass?, How does a marketing compass work?, and what you can do to put your own marketing compass in order are sure to cause you to think more deeply about these concepts.

Part one and two are so full of marketing ideas, so architectually rich in sound marketing concpets that truly the authors could have clearly pulled their stop sign out and said "hey were going to stop right here" but thank God they didn't. They went on in part three to go deeper than a scuba diver in their exploration of how to manage east. Exploring ideas that show you how you can "Bust Silos and Build Bridges" giving you five techniques to apply some wonderful ideas.

And this is afer a wealth of information where they show you how to break down your Myths of Marketing. I'll admit first that my myths were trapped but what I discovered from Roy Young is quite an eye opening list of good marketing strategies that work. Their input on how to improve upon your Marketing language will make a huge difference in your marketing relationships. Whether they are in the company or outside of the company the language barriers with in your grasp are very limited.

Here's your chance to break the marketing code. This really is a great book with so many ideas I put it in the reference part of my library. Why? Because I'll be using it to reference for many years to come. Thanks for your time....................

Your Servant & Dr. of Marketing,

Deremiah, *CPE