In this seminal paper, Professor Malcolm McDonald tackles one of the most pressing challenges in modern marketing: proving impact. As CEOs and CFOs increasingly demand hard evidence of return on marketing investment, this paper outlines a comprehensive model for marketing accountability — and proposes a practical research agenda to address long-standing gaps.
Originally delivered as a keynote to the Academy of Marketing’s B2B Special Interest Group, the paper critiques current thinking, offers a multi-level accountability framework, and highlights the urgent need for finance-aligned marketing metrics that demonstrate both commercial and strategic value.
Why It Matters
- Marketing is under pressure to demonstrate its contribution to shareholder value
- Executives report frustration with vague metrics and lack of financial rigour
- This paper defines what marketing actually is — and how to measure its effectiveness
Three Levels of Marketing Accountability
- Shareholder Value Added: Does the strategy create more return than the cost of capital?
- Linking Actions to Outcomes: Do marketing activities improve critical success factors (CSFs)?
- Micro Measurement: Are promotional investments delivering measurable results?
Key Concepts Covered
- The growing importance of intangible assets in company valuation
- Marketing due diligence and its role in reducing strategy, market, and implementation risk
- The difference between “maintenance” and “investment” marketing spend
- Applying Net Present Value (NPV) to marketing decisions
- Linking CSFs to profit outcomes using lead and lag indicators
- Why most promotional ROI metrics are flawed — and how to fix them
Insight
“Any fool can write a profit forecast. But showing how you’ll actually deliver it — in ways that stand up to shareholder scrutiny — is the hard part.” – Professor Malcolm McDonald
Download the Full White Paper
This summary introduces the model, but the full text includes diagrams, metrics frameworks, research questions, and evaluation tools for real-world application.