INTRODUCTION ''The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer. Only two functions do this: marketing and innovation. All the rest are costs.'' --PETER DRUCKER WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT The late business guru Peter Drucker put marketing at the center of a business's purpose, but that center turns out to be peppered with blind alleys and potholes. What makes some marketers successful while others are the fruit flies of the ''C-suite,'' nuisances who fill the air with buzzing but don't accomplish much in their blessedly short lives? Sadly, in recent years, the fruit flies of marketing have been multiplying.1 According to executive recruiter Spencer Stuart, chief marketing officers last only about two years. Since it takes almost that long for most marketing campaigns to get off the ground, it seems that the average chief marketing officer has one--maybe two--times at bat. By contrast, the average rookie baseball player can look forward to more than five and half years in uniform.2 No one can bat a thousand, but a small number of marketers would be on anyone's All-Star team. I call them the masters of marketing. They sometimes get their names in the paper. If, like some of the people in this book, you work for an industry giant such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, General Electric, Diageo, Microsoft, Fidelity Investments or American Express, it's hard not to attract the media's attention. But the marketing masters are not necessarily ''superstars'' whose names bloom brightly in the media before fading away. Some of them work quietly behind the scenes. They all tend to stay in one place longer than average. And they seem to have cracked the code on helping their companies achieve consistent profitable growth. What's their secret? That's the question this book answers in terms that apply to marketers of all stripes, whether ''chief'' or humble ''brave.'' WHO ARE THE MARKETING MASTERS? As far as I know, no one has yet had the nerve to put ''marketing master'' on his or her business card. And I'd look askance at anyone who claimed the title out loud. If you have to say you're a marketing master, you're probably not. But I know they're out there, and I set out to find some of them. My first stop was at the door of the top executive recruiters--the headhunters who created the title of chief marketing officer. Some cynics say their purpose was merely to inflate the value of their searches; others claim it was to give the head of marketing title parity with other executives in the so-called ''C-suite,'' for example, chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer, and the like.3 Whatever their motives, the executive recruiters I spoke to made it clear that more than extra feathers come with the designation of chief marketing officer. Jane Stevenson, who leads the marketing practice for the Heidrick & Struggles recruiting firm, says CEOs have different expectations of their top marketers today. ''Marketing used to be all about advertising,'' she says. ''In the past, some companies would house the 'creative geniuses' of marketing in padded cells, apart from line leaders. Today, with business heads more stressed than ever, they're looking for business partners. Advertising is a much smaller part of the equation.'' Interestingly, the heads of the major advertising associations, who were my next stop, agreed. For example, Bob Liodice, president of the Association of National Advertisers, which bills itself as the voice of the marketing community, says ''I'd get rid of 'advertising' in our name if I could, because it creates the connotation of a one-way monologue. Marketing is a platform for creating customer connections. It's all about dialogue.'' As head of the American Association of Advertising Agencies from 1994 until his retirement in 2008, Burtch Drake was Liodice's counterpart in the ad agency world. ''Every major ad agency realizes its role is changing,'' he told me, ''but few have figured out what to do about it.'' In fact, the ad agency heads I spoke to thought marketing has changed more in the last nine years than in the previous ninety. For example, Shelly Lazarus, chairperson of Ogilvy&MatherWorldwide, thinks that marketing is in its infancy again. ''All the old formulas need to be rethought,'' she says. ''New technologies have unleashed changes in people's behavior. They have different habits, whether they're shopping, working, or just hanging out at home.'' MARKETING REDEFINED The academics and consultants I interviewed also describe a function trying to redefine itself. Donovan Neale-May is president of the GlobalFluency communications firm that also operates the nonprofit CMO Council, which he founded. Over the years, he has worked with hundreds of the world's leading marketers and has seen the shift in their responsibilities firsthand. ''Successful marketing executives today play a role broader than just leading the marketing organization,'' he says. ''They help drive innovation and provide strategic vision.'' At some companies, marketing is the engine of innovation; at others, it provides critical fuel and direction. But everywhere there seems to be a broad consensus that, whereas marketing used to be largely about advertising, now it's expected to influence, if not encompass, the entire product realization cycle, from development to service.4 Modern marketing is just as central to a business's purpose as Drucker suspected. ''Marketing is all about growing the company by harnessing the elements of the business in a profound way,'' says Heidrick & Struggles's Stevenson. ''In fact, some of the best marketers I know don't even have a marketing background. The CMO of Wachovia came from treasury services, the CMOs of Target, Starbucks, Citigroup, and Best Buy all have broad management experience that was originally outside of marketing.'' THE CANDIDATES So, two dozen or so interviews in, it was pretty clear I wasn't looking for the secrets of this generation's ''Mad Men and MadWomen.'' The big ad agencies had not only moved off Madison Avenue, they no longer show up as often in corporate boardrooms and executive suites. The intellectual capital of the marketing world seems to have moved to the client side. With that in mind, I compiled a long list of candidates--people who had attracted the attention of these industry leaders for their marketing savvy. Some were the usual suspects who appeared on nearly everyone's list because of their high profile and record of accomplishment. Others were relatively unknown, doing exceptional work in quiet obscurity, often for companies struggling to recover from reverses on someone else's watch. I spoke to as many of these individuals as I could, and to people who had worked with them. I read about them and their companies. And in the end, I developed a list of about a dozen people who are clearly masters of marketing. They ranged from the well known--for example, John Hayes at American Express and Beth Comstock at General Electric--to the lower profile--for example, Lauren Flaherty at Nortel and Alessandro Manfredi at Unilever. Some are entrepreneurs-- Steve Knox at Tremor and Dan Pelson at uPlayMe and the Warner Music Group--while others have worked at one large company for most of their professional life--Mich Mathews at Microsoft and Michael Francis at Target. Some are technically not chief marketing officers, but CEOs who still cast a large shadow over the function that made their companies so successful--Tony Hsieh at Zappos and Robert Stephens at The Geek Squad. Some are relatively new to the function--Jon Iwata at IBM--while others have spent decades in nearly every marketing discipline--Rob Malcolm at Diageo. Excerpted from Secrets of the Marketing Masters: What the Best Marketers Do -- and Why It Works by Dick Martin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.