We’re moving this week into the heart of our book discussion on Competing for Customers and Capital, and we’re also making some adjustments as we go. After looking at the data showing how readers were going through the narrated powerpoint slides, and noticing a significant early drop-off, Victor has been editing down his supplementary presentations to make them more streamlined. I started a "cheat-sheet", putting in lay terms the Enterprise Marketing concepts that form the core of Victor’s framework, which I’ll post as soon as possible.

Today we’re going to move on to Chapter Four, and start getting into a practical discussion of Enterprise Marketing expenses–or, what counts as marketing? One of the significant challenges to marketing’s ascension into the board room is the lack of clarity in defining exactly what consititutes a marketing expense. You may be surprised at the wide gap between what marketers typically consider a marketing expense, and what investors consider a marketing expense under Sales, General & Accounting numbers–not to mention the variations across industries and companies.

In this chapter, Victor discusses the definition of Enterprise Marketing expenses, and lays out specific categories or domains of enterprise expense that relate to the intangible value that makes up such a significant portion of a company’s market value. One interesting observation on this chapter: in the case studies that highlight businesses that have returned the greates value to shareholders over the past 30 years, it is the companies that have succeeded in effective Enterprise Marketing that are on top–not those that have pursued the kind of corporate strategy that minimizes marketing to a managerial function.

To pick up the conversation where we left off, visit Victor’s narrated powerpoint on Chapter 4. If you’re joining this book discussion for the first time, you can get caught up by visiting the book discussion index.