You've got it Roy! And why do marketers prefer measuring promotion over real ROMI? The process is easy and the results make them look good.

To take it one step futher, is it possible CMOs don't want a seat at the table? Sitting there requires accountability, and with that accountability comes hard work and fear of failure.

Roy, your blog post makes me recall a quote once attributed to department store maven John Wanamaker:"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." Truth is, with all of our modern marketing sophistication, I'm sure many business owners could make the very same statement today. And Lewis's observation is an excellent one. If CMOs and VPs of Marketing want a seat at the big table, and to be treated with the same level of respect as their other upper management colleagues, there has to be accountability. It's up to the marketing executives in any organization to demonstrate the value of their contributions to the whole enterprise. It's also up to them to prove to their CEOs and CFOs that marketing is far more than "promotion". Respect is earned. Like Lewis, I've seen a number of marketers who are a bit uncomfortable with the idea of being held accountable. The famous line "the results of some marketing initiatives are so hard to measure" has always been easy to hide behind. And ultimately, gauging success or failure shouldn't be pinned to the results of one or two campaigns. If marketers are able to prove their value proposition to their companies, they won't be.

Adding insult to injury, most marketing organizations don't have the basic data infrastructure to even manage much less measure ROMI. That magic seat at the C-Level table hasn't been occupied for quite sometime...

Marketing is very, very scary to most CEO's. Very few come from marketing (read, "none" in technology), very few understand the causal relationships between 'marketing stuff' and their results, and each one has a board member who is going to ask three 'marketing-type' questions that the CEO can't answer. So no, marketing doesn't often get promoted.

Marketing is also expensive and rarely falls in the bucket of "we really NEED to do this... or a) the account will throw us out, b) we will run into SOX trouble, c) it's part of our Oracle Implementation, or d) something else that sounds scary and probably isn't." (Pick your ending depending on your CEO -- you know which one you have).

Yes, marketing has to prove ROI (do we need a new four-letter acronym just to add 'marketing'??) AND we should demand that others at the table do so, as well -- sales, ops, IT and the rest of the gang. I doubt they can do it as well or as easily.

Marketing needs to own the end user. This, in turn, gives us the authority to claim parts of product design, all of demand generation, many decisions in account management, and all of channel management. When you can speak with this kind of authority, you can have whatever seat you want.

Today's marketeers wish to 'shoot in the dark'. They do not appreciate or welcome anything which puts their strategies into 'headlights'. ROMI is not in practice these days in most of the Organizations. The brand managers are scared of the future marketing budgets which are just earmarked year after year without evaluating the ROMI.The organizations bottomline and the specific brand's life can become healthy if ROMI becomes a pre cursor to annual marketing plans.We need marketeers who are bold and are willing to face the truths of their actions rather than cover them up during their tenure and exit before it is noticed.
Hail the brave and let success kiss them wherever they exist.

Thanks all for insightful comments. In my view, all marketers need to clarify the role they play today in their organization in terms of OUTPUTS. Everyone, including the CEO, wants to know what Marketing does? Sales SELLS, R&D INVENTS, Operations MAKES and DELIVERS, HR STAFFS, Finance FUNDS. What does Marketing do? Marketing PRODUCES CASH FLOW -- however directly or indirectly. Once we establish that, we can do the work that is necessary to generate cash flow now and in the future, by aligning Marketing with other functions in the organization, like Sales to generate cash flow in the short term and R&D to generate cash flow in the long term. Over time this work will get us beyond just Promotion and into the other Marketing P's because we will be seen as the engine of the enterprise.

Roy, regarding your last comment on what Marketing does, I feel that marketing IS the business. Or to put it another way, "the business of business is marketing." From the first step of thinking up or creating a new product/service, all the way through building a long-term relationship after the sale, the entire process is marketing. Basically, business - marketing = nothing. Without cash flow, there is no business, and like you said, marketing produces the cash flow. So, marketing should be present in every aspect you referred to - sales, HR, operations, customer service, etc. And you can bet that complicates the ability to measure ROI...