Still looking for the ideal Christmas present for the CEO who doesn’t “get” marketing? Try giving a copy of The Sweet Spot: How to Maximize Marketing for Business Growth (Wiley, $39.99) by Arun Sinha, chief marketing officer at Pitney Bowes. He suggests it’s high time companies made marketing the heart and soul of their operation by focusing on hitting the sweet spot-a term Sinha defines as when “a company’s brands, products and services, finances, leaders and marketers are in tune and in time with consumer needs, aspirations and budgets.” Hitting the sweet spot is the key to growth, and Sinha recounts examples from companies like Starbucks, Apple and FedEx, which have managed to do it. FedEx’s sweet spot, for instance, is built on maintaining a trust relationship with its customers and never losing sight of its corporate motto: “Absolutely, Positively, Overnight.” But Sinha also makes the business case for giving marketing more control. Namely that brands and other intellectual capital can make up two-thirds of a company’s value and that, according to a Booz Allen Hamilton study done in Europe, companies with a strong brand focus tend to have operating profits that are twice as high as the average in their industry. It’s the kind of compelling data that might leave even the least advertising-savvy CEO feeling merry about the power of marketing.
