In trying to explain what his business does and how it does it, Pat Cummings reached for a quote. “John Wanamaker once said, ”˜I know half my marketing is wasted ”“ I just don”™t know which half,”™” he said.
Cummings is the CEO of Wilton-based Marketing Management Analytics, which helps companies quantify what they are getting for the money they spend on marketing, and even aims for a specific return on investment.
“Most chief marketing officers don”™t have the metrics out there that can measure what you get for each spend,” Cummings said. “We help companies know what they get for every element of their media.”
MMA began in 1989 as Media Marketing Assessment. It became known for developing ways to measure the effects of advertising and other marketing components on sales. It looks at both the short- and long-term effects of advertising and helps companies decide where to spend on marketing across countries, categories and brands and develop price and promotion strategies.
Cummings has been CEO of MMA since August.
“Our business is marketing mix, a form of analytics that helps companies understand how to make their marketing investment,” he said. “We collect data across a variety of indicators and use statistical models to lay out why things happened. Then we use that to predict what will happen. We take indicators from the company or the economy to predict how the company”™s brands or marketing will drive growth.”
Two forms of data go into the MMA mix ”“ behavioral data, attitudinal and market research data, as well as financial data ”“ and economic and sales figures. Cummings explained why computers alone cannot do the job.
“If you just relied on a computer to do a model you would fail,” he said. “If you analyzed sales during a hurricane in Florida, the computer would simply say that promotions didn”™t work that week or in weeks thereafter.”
Cummings said the specificity MMA”™s methods provide is in demand now, in uncertain economic times, as companies want to know just how their marketing dollars are paying off. That, he said, is what was responsible for a 123 percent jump in the company”™s revenues in the first quarter. MMA does not publicly release its financial results.
“Companies are concerned about top-line growth,” he said. “Whether they”™re spending or cutting there”™s concern that their marketing dollars are not working.”
Cummings outlined a case study. “A large manufacturing company was the client. They made consumer products. They had a budget of less than a billion dollars. We assigned a return on investment across their different marketing elements ”“ radio, TV, and so on. We told them we could improve their return on investment by 20 to 30 percent if they reallocated their marketing budget. On average we can improve it by 14 to 20 percent. To be able to attribute those increases to our work can be very significant. And word gets around.”
Still, companies are cautious right now.
“Most of the companies we work with, their war chests are full,” Cummings said. “Corporate coffers have never been richer. But people are conservative. They”™re worried about spending too much. They want a quantifiable number as to what their money is returning.”
The clients that seek out MMA tend to be in retailing, restaurants, and pharmaceuticals. All three are very data-intensive, which plays to MMA”™s strengths. And it doesn”™t seem that the economic uncertainty is weighing too heavily on the company.
“We”™ve heard there”™s a recession but chosen not to participate,” Cummings said. “Companies need this more than ever. What keeps me up at night is building the team, finding talent. Tell college grads to get an MBA in analytics or econometrics. There are jobs out there for them.”
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