First-Order Categories and Representative Quotes
Rules of Thumb/Guideposts
•[Marketing doctrine is] a little bit like rules of thumb.
•Simple rules that support marketing decisions across a range of different businesses or
categories in a range of different geographies.
•Simple statements that provide an organization an easy filter from which to make choices.
•It’s guiding principles that direct the operation of how that work is done.
•Doctrine at some level is the equivalent of the North Star.... This is what guides us or gives us
direction.
•They are guideposts;... [they] have to be general enough that they apply to different situations.
Idiosyncratic to the Firm
•It is how your organization will approach marketing.
•Something that uniquely reflects our approach;... something that would fit our culture.
•It’s really our proprietary way of doing marketing. Everybody that works at [Firm X], whether
you’re there for a year or there for 20 years, it becomes a way of doing things.
•Our beliefs about how you’re going to do or approach marketing.
•Every company’s doctrine is different because every company’s history is also different.
•Bill Walsh has a system, right?... It’s kind of like, this is how we play football. These are our
operating principles. Marketing doctrine is the same—it is a company’s marketing philosophy
Learning Across Situations
•[Principles] developed from many different situations.
•Every company tries a bunch of different things, finds that something works pretty darn well, and
people teach this to each other.
•Success breeds success.... You need a few great [company] examples to teach to others.
•Companies actually learn from their and others’ mistakes rather than make them all over again.
Learning Over Time
•Synonymous with a set of core beliefs that are developed over a long period of time and many
different situations.
•And then over time, a repeated pattern emerged from actually doing what we said was working well.
Marketing Activities Rather Than Marketing Function
•It’s not small “m” marketing function, it’s kind of like big “M.”
•Everyone is able to talk about how to approach a market, define a market, and activate a market
in a common way from marketing to technology to sales [functions].
•It is not just the narrowly defined function of marketing, because driving profitable growth
requires other functions as well.
•Marketing doctrine tends to address problems that are commercially oriented in the marketplace
and is not just for the marketing folks.
•The broader organization needs to know what are the guiding lights of marketing at [Company X]
and be able to use it.
Multiproduct, Multigeography
•If I’m a multiproduct, multicategory, multichannel company, then my doctrine is guiding decisions
across the firm.
•Regardless of where you’re located around the world, we can use the same principles.
Focus on Strategic Advantage
•It’s something that we believe will lead to advantage for the company relative to others.… It’s
kind of the key stuff—most critical ... areas.
•We are building a strategy around sustainability. Marketing doctrine guides exactly where we
have to invest resources to support this initiative.
•These 12 principles are our clear, unequivocal choices on what is important to be successful.
Exemplars
•It is how we make marketing decisions.... These principles are the best way to make these
decisions.
•Our vision for what marketing success looks like.
•A belief in the way of life about how you’re going to do marketing, and what good marketing
looks like.
•Common process whereby information, research, evaluation, [and] the judgments about whether
a decision should be a go or a no-go could be more easily shared across markets.
•Marketing doctrine [consists of] the statements of what good looks like given the particular scope
of the initiative or of the company.