Idea in Brief
Companies have powerful technologies for understanding and interacting with customers, yet most still depend on mass media marketing to drive impersonal transactions.
To compete, companies must shift from pushing individual products to building long-term customer relationships.
The marketing department must be reinvented as a “customer department” that replaces the CMO with a chief customer officer, makes product and brand managers subservient to customer managers, and oversees customer-focused functions including R&D, customer service, market research, and CRM.
These changes shift the firm’s focus from product profitability to customer profitability, as measured by metrics such as customer lifetime value and customer equity. This organizational transformation will uproot entrenched interests and so must be driven from the top.
Imagine a brand manager sitting in his office developing a marketing strategy for his company’s new sports drink. He identifies which broad market segments to target, sets prices and promotions, and plans mass media communications. The brand’s performance will be measured by aggregate sales and profitability, and his pay and future prospects will hinge on those numbers.