I was catching up on my reading last night and happened to read Al Ries’s Column “Metric Madness: Running biz by the numbers is just not logical” in the May 4, 2009 issue of AdAge.

With all due respect, Mr. Ries makes an argument that marketing is to focused on math, ROI, etc.  I’ll let you review the column yourself, but Mr. Ries ends his article with the following… “Mathematics is logical. Marketing is not. That’s why marketing is so difficult to learn.”

Well Mr. Ries… I’ve got a different take on the situation and frankly don’t agree with a number of points.  Let me explain.

1. The Language of Business of Numbers:  Guess what, I didn’t make up this rule, but any good manager, CEO or marketing person should understand this. 

The purpose of companies is to make money.  Yep, it’s as simple as that.  That point is especially important when you have investors or shareholders….for some reason they actually want a company to be profitable – hey I know its “crazy talk” but they want to make money off of their investment.

1. Authenticity and Character:  You reference in your article about having the accountants come in and “shift some of the numbers around” to meet your purposes and that “one of our biggest complaints about management is its tendency to run things by the numbers.    

I grant you that the recent financial crisis doesn’t show the best side of the financial sector.  But that is an issue of Authenticity and Character.  The people who made those decisions were absolutely wrong… but it’s more than “shifting numbers” it’s a question of character.

Also, perhaps one of the reasons the media and advertising business has been dealing with the “rise of procurement” inside of companies is because of the very situation you mentioned agencies are doing – “shifting the numbers.”

1. Your point that “Mathematics is logical.  Marketing is not.” 

I could not disagree with you more.  The greatest connection engine on the planet “the internet” allows marketers to understand not only what’s working, but what’s not.  It helps us determine whether creative is performing… what creative we should run.  Marketing is logical and disagree that it’s tough to learn.  It’s not.  But we make it difficult as marketers and agencies because we don’t take the extra step to understand what the numbers are telling us.  Numbers aren’t like some bad voodoo spell.  They are a guidebook into the thoughts, hearts and passions of our customers.  Metrics are a good thing… it’s allowed us to stop wasteful marketing investments and increase our market share by focusing our efforts. 

I was Media Director at HP for 5 years – managing a huge amount of media spend across the world.  Every single media rep, agency, etc. told me the same story.  Our media (or agency) can deliver sales – my questions back was prove it?  Put your money wear your mouth is… if your agency or media property can deliver sales then guess what?... go on 100% commission of each product your campaign or media vehicle sells.

1. Walk in the Clients Shoes:

 You think you’ve got a tough job.  Try sitting in the client chair for a week.  Where we have to show results, where you’re held to sales, profit and market share numbers, where we have to stand in front of management and explain why something didn’t work.  Thus, we need math and metrics to help us make informed decisions on the allocation of our financial and labor resources.  If one agency is performing better… guess what?  they’ll probably get more business.  If a campaign is performing better than another one….we’ll probably make a tough decision to shut it down.

            Scott