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MIP 24,5

VIEWPOINT

How to get marketing back in the boardroom
Some thoughts on how to put right the well known malaise of marketing
Malcolm McDonald
Cranfield School of Management, UK
Abstract
Purpose – To show how the marketing discipline has lost its boardroom credibility by its own short sightedness over the past half century, and suggest how the situation might be redeemed. Design/methodology/approach – Personal reflection, based on long, broad and deep experience. Findings – Whereas success is measured in capital markets in terms of shareholder value-added, balanced against risks associated with future strategies, the time value of money and the cost of capital, marketing management avoids such issues – this despite the fact that most of the capital value of companies resides in intangibles, the very things on which their actions have an impact. Practical implications – Senior practitioners, business-school academics and marketing consultants will have to change their attitudes and behaviour if the marketing function is to be restored to the boardroom. Originality/value – A call to arms. Keywords Marketing management, Risk management, Boards of directors Paper type Viewpoint

426
Received January 2006 Accepted February 2006

There is little point in wasting the opportunity afforded by an invitation to write a Viewpoint by even more flagellation of the discipline we all love and to which we have devoted our professional lives. The reasons for our malaise were spelled out very clearly in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek paper of mine in the Journal of Marketing Management shortly after I retired as a full-time Professor of Marketing (McDonald, 2004). The very title of the paper surely gave more than a hint of what was to follow: “Marketing, existential malpractice and an etherised discipline: a soteriological comment”. In it, fully referenced