Within the study, conducted for the CIM, there were a number of interesting findings which are applicable to all sectors and are at the heart of the accountability debate.  First, according to Swartz and his colleagues, marketing planning and budgeting goals can have a significant impact on the bottom line.  However, he stresses, there is no one model or formula for marketing expenditure that can be taken off the shelf to establish the relationship between expenditure, response and performance. 

Why single out these two points?  Because they are the first steps towards practising "smart marketing".  In other words, find a way to figure out not just how the budget is spent - any disgruntled finance director can tell you that - but why.  Develop the sort of approach to marketing measurement that not only shows cause and effect between spending and performance, but enables forecast of results over the longer term.  But continually refine it until it fits your particular company's circumstances like a glove. 

This goes beyond what can be vague discussions about effectiveness.  Developing a precise, data-based system or model for marketing planning and forecasting not only helps develop a common business language, but, even more importantly, it can act as a catalyst for creating a more customer-oriented company by getting everyone to begin to see the correlation between customer-focused marketing and results. 

Two examples, one from the UK and the other from the US, illustrate just how powerfully smart marketing can work.  Leading UK investment fund managers, Henderson Touche Remnant, brought in last year their first-ever marketing director.  She has little time for the "gut feel" school of marketing.  She wants to be able to pinpoint just what effort brings what results, and forecast where her money will be best spent to boost sales. 

She is thus in the midst of building a very sophisticated model that will use whatever internal and external information is relevant to influencing the behaviour of the company's customers.  The model will help her decide how her budget should be allocated, when various activities should be carried out, and most importantly, in terms of justifying it, why. 

This is by no means an easy process and it takes time - up to two years in her estimation - because until she can see precisely what data has what influence on customer buying patterns, her model will not be as precise as she wants it.  Once she gets it working, however, she will have a powerful predictive tool at the touch of a PC key.  And, in the short term, she can begin to use it to track the effect of promotions on sales.  This is not rocket science, she argues.  A lot is common sense.  As she says, "Everybody should be doing it.  You cannot be taken seriously if you do not have data". 

Four thousand miles away in Chicago another strong proponent of smart marketing is also setting up processes to prove that marketing is an investment, not an expense.  The vice-president of sales and marketing at the major hotel management company Hyatt International, is determined to introduce what he calls science and discipline into marketing and get away from making decisions using a large dollop of instinct. 

The ultimate objective is to track the lifetime value of each customer and thus decide the most profitable allocation of marketing efforts.  As he points out, "Our product is very easy to copy.  Over the next five to ten years, because all hotels have the same data, getting sustainable competitive advantage will come from better understanding and communication with our customers". 

It is not easy, he admits.  It means setting up data-driven systems while driving a total change of culture throughout the organisation.  Begun a few years ago, the Hyatt programme has a number of elements, including training programmes aimed at senior and middle management; changing from IT systems designed by accountants for accountants to ones relevant to marketing; making sure, hotel by hotel around the world, that the data is clean and that everyone understands how important it is to feed in information; and hiring staff trained in marketing as well as hotel management. 

Nothing particularly earth-shaking but demanding patience, commitment, courage and resources.  And, of course, proof that it can work.  He points to a three-month promotion run at the Grant Hyatt Hong Kong.  At the end of the promotion the return on investment was 27 per cent.  However, because Hyatt now takes a longer-term view, it continued to track new business from the promotion and found the ROI was an impressive 157 per cent at the end of nine months. 

Both these examples are optimistic signs that marketing could be getting over what has been called its mid-life crisis, driven by marketers showing that smart marketing is not only possible but vital.  This goes beyond accountability.  It is really about competitive survival.