Chief Executives Often Don'T Understand.

Starbucks, red bull, Rolex, Lexus, Mercedes Benz, Dai Sen electric appliance, Godiva chocolate, they all belong to high priced brands in the same category, but high price is not necessarily a bad thing.

Neglected marketing

From GE in New York to Disney in Losangeles, the board of directors across the United States seems to be hanging from a thick velvet curtain, which completely separates the marketing from the management.

This is really a mystery.

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This gap is becoming wider and wider.

For a team that wants to succeed in business or competitive sports, it seriously weakens internal cohesion.

"Everyone is for me, I am for everyone". This ancient motto is also hard to hear in today's office corridors of American enterprises.

In most companies, the left brain management school and the right brain marketing school are always at war.

However, this is no good for companies, their careers, customers, and even the whole economy.

DDT has conducted in-depth interviews with 217 top executives in five European countries.

According to the firm's report, "the vast majority of CEO think their enterprises understand the role of marketing, but other senior management and marketing teams strongly oppose this."

Fortune magazine has described this gap in an exaggerated way.

To celebrate the start of 75th anniversary, the magazine lists 75 books to teach you what you need to know in business.

But how many of these 75 books are related to marketing? Obviously, they think marketing is not one of the things you must know in business, because no marketing book is included.

Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, named "best manager in twentieth Century" by Fortune magazine, has mentioned about marketing content in his two best seller "Jack Welch's autobiography" and "win". Almost nothing.

However, he wrote a lot about human resources management.

"HR director should be the second most important person in an enterprise."

(he is really busy and can replace those marketing directors who usually have only 26 months in office.

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Of course, Jack Welch did a good job at GE.

But one reason is that he doesn't have to worry about marketing, because GE is already a very strong brand.

If Mr Welch is to take charge of Chrysler, will it be the same?

Eliminating the chasm

As a marketing person, we sympathize with the marketing executive in the company.

However, our revenues must rely on those companies that employ us to provide marketing strategies for our company, CEO.

As a marketing strategy consulting firms, we are very happy (and very sad) to work for hundreds of Companies in different industries.

Usually the company's CEO employs us; usually these CEO lists the problems that the company is facing; usually these CEO decide whether to accept our proposal or not.

So, where are the marketing personnel of these companies? They basically sit on the side of the conference table, and on the other side are the senior management of the company.

Between the two sides is the velvet curtain.

I wrote these things, trying to put away the velvet curtain and bridge the two sides of the chasm.

Help marketing understand management and help management understand marketing.

As a marketing consultant, you may think that we often provide strategic and tactical advice for our clients' marketing projects.

This is not the case.

We need to spend a lot of time explaining marketing rules to management.

Most CEO are extremely smart.

A dim light bulb can hardly illuminate the corner of the office. When CEO understands what marketing can't do, they will know what to do.

Unfortunately, smart CEO has a very distorted understanding of marketing.

It is very difficult to put these ideas right, because all logical minds of the left brain are wrong about marketing.

In fact, a company has been in trouble for a long time, precisely because they employ CEO that is knowledgeable and common sense, but it is difficult to change their inherent ideas. These CEO know little or nothing about marketing.

Take Chrysler company for example.

In 2006, Chrysler's sales fell by 7 percentage points, and the company lost $1 billion 500 million.

This is one reason why Daimler finally handed over the company to the Asset Management Co in 2007.

What did Sai Bo do next? They hired Robert Nardelli, former chief executive of home depot, and hoped that he would lead Chrysler out of trouble.

What is Mr. Nardelli's expertise? According to the newspaper report, he is an expert on "reducing costs and producing mass production".

Chrysler plans to reduce 13000 jobs.

Mr. Nardelli expressed his view on this management method: "to do faster and more efficiently is what we want."

Not fast enough? Not efficient enough? Is this Chrysler's problem? Every marketer knows what Chrysler's problem is.

It is not a problem of mass production, nor is it a price issue.

Please give me a reason why you will buy Chrysler.

I can't tell you, can you?

Chrysler's marketing issues

It will not solve the problem of making Chrysler cheaper and faster.

Chrysler is cheaper than TOYOTA, Honda and Nissan.

Chief executives generally find it difficult to recognize the issue of marketing.

The reason why you can become CEO is because you love your company very much and show your loyalty to the enterprise brand forever.

In your mind, even a layman will worship your company's brand.

As nudley joined Chrysler, he said, "I am not only for income, but for the infinitely worshipped Chrysler brand."

But if you don't know how to solve the problem, how can it solve the problem? Does the marketing school think Chrysler is an "infinitely worshipped" brand? Mercedes Benz is almost the same, but what about Chrysler?

From a marketing point of view, most Chrysler brands are in a mess.

What is Chrysler? Isn't it an expensive PT Walker (PTCruiser), or an expensive Chrysler 300? What is Dodge? Is it a cheap car or an expensive truck?

However, according to the company's "common sense" thinking, they need full line products and use their brand names to do marketing.

A few years ago, when Chrysler bought the American Motor Corp, the company was a mess.

American Motor Corp's only brand with high recognition is Jeep.

Even so, American Motor Corp believes that Jeep dealers should also sell Eagle buses.

After the acquisition, the American Motor Corp brand retained by Chrysler was only jeep.

Everything else is in the parking garage of history.

One is management led action, the other is marketing LED action.

As early as 1998, Daimler Benz bought Chrysler at a price of 36 billion US dollars.

The international forum Herald called it a landmark paction in the future blueprint of the global automotive industry.

What does this sound like? For us, it sounds like a typical left brain management measure.

The right brain marketing strategy is the opposite: a German American car company sells cheap cars and sells expensive cars.

Intuition, it has no meaning for marketing. It has no meaning to finance.