Jonathan Knowles: Why Can't Marketing and Finance Be Friends?

Jonathan Knowles wants you to learn a second language­—Finance. (don’t worry, it won’t hurt a bit!) Join the author of “Vulcans, Earthlings and Marketing ROI” in a incisive look at the remix of branding and finance.

Why Can’t Marketing and Finance Be Friends?
Jonathan Knowles, CEO and Founder, Type 2 Consulting
Two world views are common in business. One (that predominates in the finance department) considers the principle of rational economic maximization to be an accurate description of human decision making. The other (that predominates in the marketing department) sees human decision making as a function of a more complex set of considerations, involving a range of function, emotional and psychological factors.

The challenge for marketers is that the first world view has become the norm in the C-suite because of the finance department’s facility for speaking in terms of shareholder value, the de facto language of the boardroom. The relative innumeracy of marketers has led to the marginalization of marketing and to a lack of appreciation of its role in business strategy.

The goal of this presentation is to help marketers become more fluent in how to express the business case for marketing in financial terms. It also identifies the major sources of conflict between marketing and finance and how this tension can be turned to productive ends.

HBR Article: Reconcilable Differences

M50 Article: Emotion & Reason

PI Article: Friends

Jonathan Knowles is the Founder and CEO of Type 2 Consulting – a consultancy that specializes in the brand dimension of business strategy.

Jonathan has a background in finance (Bank of England), strategy consulting (Marakon Associates), creative brand strategy (Wolff Olins), brand equity measurement (Stern Stewart/Y&R's BrandEconomics), and brand valuation (Brand Finance).

This hybrid background has given Jonathan an unusual facility for integrating the marketing and financial perspectives on branding, leading BusinessWeek to describe him as “one of those rare financial guys who understands and appreciates marketing” and MarketingNPV to call him “brand strategist extraordinaire with an unusual fluency in Finance.” Jonathan just thinks of himself as being in the business of using branding to make companies more successful.

Jonathan is the co-author of Vulcans, Earthlings and Marketing ROI and was the principal contributor to Brands: Visions & Values. He is working on a new book – Sibling Rivals – about improving the dialogue between marketing and finance.

His articles have appeared in the AMA's Marketing Management, Harvard Business Review, Intellectual Asset Management, the MIT Sloan Management Review, Professional Investor and The Wall Street Journal.

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