Olivia: A study found that seven out of ten CEOs believe they are wasting money on marketing. Jackson: Whoa, hold on. Seven out of ten? That’s 70% of bosses looking at their marketing department and thinking it’s a giant, glittering money pit. That’s terrifying if you’re a marketer. Your job is basically to be popular, and your own CEO doesn't even like you. Olivia: It’s the central anxiety of the entire profession! And that's the exact problem the book ROI in Marketing: The Design Thinking Approach to Measure, Prove, and Improve the Value of Marketing by Jack and Patti Phillips, Frank Fu, and Hong Yi, sets out to solve. Jackson: That is a mouthful of a title. It sounds like it was written by a committee. What's the story with these authors? Are they marketers or are they accountants? Because that title has a bit of an identity crisis. Olivia: That's the magic of it! It's a powerhouse team. Jack and Patti Phillips are legends in the measurement world; they co-founded the ROI Institute, which is the global standard for this stuff. They basically wrote the book on how to calculate the return on investment for, well, anything. Jackson: Okay, so they're the numbers people. Olivia: Exactly. But then they teamed up with a marketing professor, Frank Fu, and an international consultant, Hong Yi. They're trying to build a bridge between the creative, "it's-all-about-the-vibe" world of marketing and the cold, hard, "show-me-the-money" world of the C-suite. Jackson: A much-needed bridge, it sounds like. So where do we even start with a problem that big? How do you convince those seven out of ten CEOs that you're not just setting their money on fire?

Olivia: You start by acknowledging the fear. The book paints this incredibly vivid picture of a CMO named Jessica at a fast-growing craft brewery. She’s in the boardroom, presenting her team’s latest triumphs. Jackson: I can see it now. Cool new logo, slick social media campaigns, a successful community festival… she’s feeling pretty good about herself. Olivia: She is! She’s talking about all the positive feedback, the buzz, the improved sales. Then the new CEO, Andrew, leans forward. He’s not a beer guy; he’s a finance guy. And he cuts right through the vibe and asks the question that makes every marketer’s blood run cold. Jackson: Let me guess. "This is all great, Jessica, but what's the ROI?" Olivia: Precisely. He says, "I see a lot of activity, but I don't see the value. Your budget is a huge chunk of our revenue. I need you to calculate the value your department generated and compare it to the expense." And Jessica just… freezes. She has no answer. Jackson: Oof, I can feel the sweat on her palms from here. That’s a career-defining moment, and not in a good way. Is this a new pressure, though? Or have marketers always had to fight for their seat at the table? Olivia: The book argues the pressure is intensifying dramatically. It’s not just about justifying your existence anymore; it’s about survival. They point to a real-world example at Coca-Cola back in 2017. The company was struggling with growth, so what did they do? They eliminated the Chief Marketing Officer role entirely. Jackson: They just… got rid of the CMO? Of Coca-Cola? The company that basically invented modern marketing? Olivia: They replaced it with a "Chief Growth Officer." The message was crystal clear: if your marketing isn't directly and measurably driving growth, you're obsolete. The book’s fundamental argument is that marketing has to undergo a massive identity shift. It needs to stop being seen as an "expense," like the electric bill, and start being seen as an "investment," like a new factory. Jackson: I get the principle. An expense is just money gone. An investment is money you put in to get more money out. But some of the greatest marketing in history feels impossible to measure. What about brand building? Or Apple's 'Think Different' campaign? I doubt Steve Jobs was running spreadsheets to calculate the ROI on a poster of Gandhi. Olivia: That is the million-dollar question, and it’s a fantastic point. People often think you have to choose: you can either be a creative genius who works on intuition, or you can be a data drone who lives in a spreadsheet. Jackson: Right. You’re either an artist or an accountant. Olivia: And that’s where the book gets really innovative. It says you don't have to choose. The goal isn't to kill the art of marketing. The goal is to get better at proving the science behind it. To do that, you have to become a kind of marketing detective.

Jackson: A marketing detective? I like the sound of that. It’s better than a marketing accountant. So what’s in this detective kit? Olivia: The core of it is what they call the ROI Methodology. But instead of thinking of it as a boring 12-step process, think of it as a forensic toolkit for investigating a sale. Jackson: Okay, I'm with you. The 'crime' is a customer buying something. Olivia: Exactly. And at any crime scene, there are multiple suspects. Who or what 'caused' the sale? Was it your brilliant social media campaign? Or was it the fact that your biggest competitor just had a massive product recall? Or maybe it was a new government tax credit? Or just a really, really good salesperson? All of these things leave 'fingerprints' on the final outcome. Jackson: And if you just claim credit for the sale without checking for other fingerprints, you look like a fool when the real cause comes to light. Olivia: You lose all credibility. The book’s methodology is about isolating the evidence. It gives you the tools to dust for your campaign’s specific fingerprints and say, with confidence, "Of all the things that happened, our marketing efforts were responsible for this much of the result." Jackson: That sounds powerful. Can you give me an example of how that works in the real world? How do you actually dust for these fingerprints? Olivia: There’s a great case study in the book about a company that launched a new high-efficiency furnace. They ran a big marketing campaign with TV commercials and social media. After six months, they’d sold 420,000 units. Jackson: Fantastic! The marketing team takes a victory lap, pops the champagne. Olivia: Not so fast. The marketing director was smart. They knew other things were happening at the same time. Their retail partners were getting more supportive, a major competitor had a product quality issue, and the government had just launched a new tax incentive for energy-efficient appliances. Any of those could have driven sales. Jackson: Right. The other suspects at the crime scene. So how did they figure out what was what? Olivia: They used a qualitative isolation method. They brought in focus groups of actual customers who had bought the furnace. They put all the potential influencing factors on a board—our TV ad, the tax credit, the competitor’s problem—and had a neutral facilitator walk them through it. They asked the customers, "Thinking about your own decision to buy, what percentage of your choice was influenced by each of these factors?" Jackson: They just… asked them? That seems so simple, but also so smart. You're getting the data straight from the source. Olivia: It's a core principle of Design Thinking, which is the other half of the book's title. It’s about empathy. It's about understanding the human journey. After the focus groups, they sent out a wider survey to a thousand customers to validate the findings. They found that, on average, customers attributed about 39% of their decision to the marketing campaign. And they also asked the customers how confident they were in that estimate, which added another layer of credibility. Jackson: So they could go back to the CEO and say, "Of the 420,000 furnaces sold, we can credibly claim our marketing was the primary driver for about 132,000 of them." Olivia: Precisely. It’s not a guess. It’s not a vibe. It’s a credible, evidence-based story. You've isolated the fingerprints. You've built your case. Jackson: That makes so much sense. But it also sounds incredibly complicated. Is this where that 'Design Thinking' part of the title comes in? Is that what keeps the process from just being a robotic, number-crunching exercise? Olivia: That's exactly its role. The ROI Methodology provides the structure—the 'what' to measure. Design Thinking provides the soul—the 'how' and 'why'. It's the curiosity that makes you ask, "What other factors could be at play here?" It's the empathy that helps you design a focus group that gets real, honest answers from customers. It’s the storytelling that helps you take all that data and communicate it in a way that actually persuades your CEO. It turns a sterile report into a compelling narrative of cause and effect.

Jackson: So, it seems the book's big idea is that proving marketing's value isn't about forcing marketers to become accountants. It's about empowering them to become better storytellers—but storytellers whose stories are backed by credible, detective-like evidence. You’re not just saying, "Our campaign worked." You're showing how it worked, why it worked, and by how much. Olivia: That’s a perfect summary. It reframes accountability from a threat into an opportunity. When you can prove your value, you don't have to beg for a budget anymore. You can make a business case for it. You can show that for every dollar the company gives you, you can give them back a dollar and fifty cents. Jackson: It changes the entire conversation. You’re no longer a cost center to be minimized; you’re a growth engine to be fueled. Olivia: Exactly. And the most powerful first step for anyone listening, according to the book, is a simple shift in mindset. Stop thinking about 'launching a campaign' and start thinking about 'designing an experiment.' Before you spend a single dollar, ask yourself two questions: What is my hypothesis? And how will I know if I'm right? Jackson: What do I believe will happen, and how will I measure it? Olivia: Yes. That simple mental shift—from creating to investigating—is the start of everything. It forces you to plan for results from the very beginning. Jackson: I'd love to hear from marketers out there listening to this. What's the toughest thing you've ever had to measure? A feeling? A brand? Let us know on our socials, we're always curious to see how these ideas land in the real world. Olivia: It’s a challenge every single one of them faces. This book provides one of the most robust toolkits I’ve ever seen to meet that challenge head-on. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.