In The Practice of Management, Peter Drucker wrote: “The business enterprise has two and only two basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.” Today, chief executives at many leading companies are frustrated over marketing’s inability to produce measurable results. Increasingly, they view the marketing department as an expense rather than an investment and, as a result, marketing is losing power in the ­corporation.

During the past two decades, marketing’s role as the company growth engine has spluttered amid fragmenting markets, strong global competition, product commoditisation, shorter product life cycles and powerful distribution channels.