The marketing Chief and the Chief Executive

PART II

Of course marketing is interested in efficiency. But he most palpable fact  of its existence is that it cannot easily control the events or conditions that produce efficiency  The major events or conditions of its operations are the actions of its competitors and the behavior of customers. More than any other corporate functions, marketing constantly faces energetic adversaries against which i must struggle for success. Success is defined as consumer patronage. What makes success especially hard to attain is the fact that the consumer seems constantly to change the conditions under which he will deal with one rather that another supplier.

Marketing may not be harder than manufacturing, but it is enormously different. One of the most exasperating ways in which it is different is the difficult is determining which of several candidates will take a better marketing vice- president. Marketing is filled with uncontrolled, uncontrollable  unstandardizable, and unpredictable hazards. Like politics and sex, marketing is a squishy subject.

It is precisely because of that the boss can be so easily and disastrously misled- whether the boss is a president directing and evaluating the marketing vice- president or whether he is a marketing vice- president directing or evaluating a sales manager, a product planner, an advertising director, or a market researcher. No wonder the chief executive whose backgound lies outside marketing would rather deal with almost any other subject, like manufacturing and finance. Their seemingly solid and tangible manageability provide a reassuring.

Because marketing deals with thee sources of revenue, it can make a strong case for the chief's one-sided support-support he gneerally feels compelled to give because he has come to appreciate marketing's importance. For those in marketing, this is highly felicitous. Unfortunately, it may not be good for the whole company. Marketing decisions, because they deal with squishy matters, often require a good deal more wisdom, judgment, and prophetic insight than careful deductive reasoning.