The Marketer's Bookshelf

Marketing Daily, September 2, 2009

Know any down-in-the-mouth CMOs or ad execs so paralyzed by the downturn that they literally don't know what to do with themselves at the office? If so, forget the pep talk, and just give them a copy of The Shift: The transformation of today's marketers into tomorrow's growth leaders, by Scott M. Davis (Jossey-Bass.) The book is shamefully biased, but it's a great ego boost: Marketers are the most important people in every company. Really! "No one is better suited to drive the growth agenda than the head of marketing," he writes in the preface, and you get the feeling he really believes it. In fact, the entire book is devoted not just to ordinary marketing execs, but those he exalts as Visionary Marketers. (By the second chapter, you may be picturing these VMs wandering around the C-Suite in Jedi robes, while the poor slobs from R&D, sales, finance, and operations are off soaking their heads somewhere.)

The relentless marketing boosterism would be annoying if this book weren't so useful, and Davis identifies five key areas for corporate transformation at a commendable nuts-and-bolts level. There's even a checklist for each called "So, what do I do on Monday morning?" Davis addresses big concepts -- shifting a company's cultural focus from operations to customers, let's say -- on a step-by-step basis, including research and coalition-building, and tries to be as pragmatic as he is strategic. The goal is simple: CMOs should gradually ease the other C-dudes out of the sandbox, until they "have changed their profile and perception from being seen solely as a cost center to a powerful revenue (and margin) driver," writes Davis, a senior partner at Prophet, until finally, "these marketers have become partners with their CEOs, helping to articulate and drive their company's growth agenda from here on in." Power-mad? Maybe. But considering how beat up many marketing execs feel these days, The Shift may be just what the doctor ordered.