In the process of redesigning marketing environments we gathered a lot of MRM related information and many relevant business cases. Finally, they have resulted in a framework of ideas that we have called ‘MRM fundamentals’. The introductions below represent essential elements of our findings and explain parts of the ‘origin of marketing complexity’. In practice they are heavily related. Your comments & suggestions for improvements are more than welcome!

Effectiveness versus efficiency
Doing the right things and doing things right. Two important elements in every business process because a brilliant idea only becomes successful, when it is brilliantly executed. Although marketing strategies can be effective, they often lack the necessary efficiency. How can that happen, what is exactly the difference between the two and how do they influence each other?
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Direction of efficiency
Many times we hear "I want to do more with less". But what does this exactly mean? Do you want to save budget, do you want to shorten time to market or do you perhaps want to improve the quality of the output? These different efficiency objectives do have different directions. If you want to go to the north, east, south and west at the same time you will spent a lot of energy and not move at all.
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5 M's of MRM
Oh no, not another new kid on the block that wants to score with a variation on the famous 4 marketing P’s, you might think. We agree, but we also found out that lists like this are easy to work with. So…manage you marketing resources by looking at Men, Machines, Materials, Money and Minutes. What do they exactly mean and why are they important?
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Increasing complexity: volume
If we had to choose one thing that surprises us the most, it is the lack of insight in most marketing environments on ‘information volumes’. How can you manage something if you don’t know what it is? The increase in information volumes is the most important contributor to marketing complexity in recent years. Using the commonly accepted source-message-channel-receiver model as a starting point, we provide a framework for understanding information volumes and show how seemingly small changes can have a major impact on the management of marketing.
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Increasing complexity: manageability
Due to increased complexity, companies tend to split up the bigger problem into ‘bite size’ portions, each with its own sub-goals, business owners, infrastructure, budgets and even cultures. Unfortunately, when the portions come together, they do not always add up to the overall objective. How are roles and responsibilities (Men) set and how is technology (Machine) used within the current marketing climate?
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Increasing complexity: Broadcasting versus Narrowcasting
In general, 1-to-1 communications will get you the best results. We all know that and we all want that, but is your technological infrastructure ready for it? And what about your copywriter? And even more important….is your budget ready? If you want to go from mass communication to mass customisation, you’d better understand the operational consequences.
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10 primary colours of marketing
Identifying the cause of the pain is the first step towards dealing with it. In our search for understanding the origin of marketing complexity, we identified 10 variables that, in a certain combination, form and order, are the main influencers of the marketing environment. In other words, any marketing operations problem is built out of one or more of these components. Like the machine that can create any colour from a bucket of white paint, mixed with a percentage of black, red, yellow and/or blue, we identified 10 ‘primary colors of marketing’.
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Kill or Manage complexity
If you identified the bottlenecks in your marketing operations, you have to decide if you want to deal with it or get rid of it. In other words, do you ‘kill or manage’? In practise the most successful Marketing Resource Management strategies are a mix of both.
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Knowlegde areas
The ‘marketing environment’ includes all internal and external areas that influence marketing operations from a macro to a micro level. Some of them are given facts, some of them you can influence and some of them you can actually manage. In the process of creating marketing material you pass several stages, areas, specialities that we call knowledge areas in which you can manage your marketing resources.
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Ten functional areas of marketing
People, process and technology in marketing. How are they related in modern marketing operations? What comes with the territory of marketing operations? We defnied 10 Functional Areas of Martketing. For each market, each corporate strategy and marketing strategy, you will find that a different set of functional areas are important.
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