The Tale of Marketing Martha and Bottomline Bob,
A Love Story
or, Measure by Measure: Virtue Rewarded

By Katharine Delahaye Paine

Once upon a time, in an organization far, far away, there worked a diligent marketing director named Martha. Martha was one of the most creative marketers in the land. Her publicity ideas got mentions on the morning talk shows, her ads won many awards and her trade show booths were always packed.

But all was not happy with Martha, for she led a lonely life of too many late nights at the office. She and her loyal staff labored far too hard with too few resources. Martha knew her heroic efforts deserved greater praise and recognition, but every year Bottomline Bob, the company's Chief Financial Officer, would cut Martha's budget another 5%. And her department could do nothing about it, except to do bad imitations of "Robert the Rotten" behind his back, go out for margaritas and bitch about their situation.

But then one day, Creative Cathy, Martha's marketing friend she hadn't seen in a while, joined them at their weekly bitch session. Turns out Cathy had recently been promoted, her budget had been doubled and she was going to hire six new people. This greatly interested Martha, because she knew that only a year ago Cathy had been so frustrated in her work that she and her department were ready to quit.

Cathy confided that she'd gone to a measurement workshop and learned how to put together a "dashboard" for her department. With this new suite of tools her whole staff now knew exactly which programs were working and which were not. Moreover, the last time Anxious Annie, the oh-so-annoying Chief Financial Officer, said in a meeting that, "I don't think our business press is as good as it used to be," Cathy could respond, "In fact, our business press is 35% of our overall coverage, a quarter to quarter increase of 7% over this period last year. It is 22% positive and that is an 8% improvement over the previous year, and 2% better than the competition." Since that time, Annie hadn't said another word, and Cathy's budget had been doubled.

Martha offered to buy Cathy a whole pitcher of margaritas if she'd give her some tips, and so they talked long into the night. The next day Martha began identifying key measures of success in her daily work. She knew that what the company really wanted was favorable exposure for their new products, and that it hoped to show an increase in customer transactions as a result. She commissioned a media analysis, gathered some customer loyalty data from the research department and began to assemble her own dashboard.

About a month later, Bottomline Bob stormed into her office and demanded to know how she was going cut her budget yet again. She explained that if she did, there was a good chance the competition would gain significantly more exposure than their own organization, and, as a result, customer transactions would decline. When Martha showed Bob her "dashboard" charts, he understood exactly what she was telling him and began to look at her with new respect. In fact, at the next executive committee meeting he argued for an increase in Martha's budget.

As a way of showing her appreciation, Martha invited Bob out for margaritas. They were married six months later and lived happily ever after.

The moral of the story is: Paradise can be found by the dashboard lights.