Rethinking Marketing

Companies have never before had such powerful technologies for understanding and interacting with customers. Yet too many firms operate as if they're stuck in the 1960s, an era of mass marketing, mass media, and impersonal transactions. To compete in an aggressively interactive environment, companies must shift their focus from driving transactions to maximizing customer lifetime value. That means products and brands must be made subservient to customer relationships. And that means transforming the marketing department-traditionally focused on current sales-into a "customer department" by: replacing the CMO with a chief customer officer, cultivating customers rather than pushing products, adopting new performance metrics, and bringing under the marketing umbrella all customer-focused departments, including R&D and customer service. As the new year dawns-and as businesses crawl out from under the weight of the global recession-our focus is on reinvention. This HBR Spotlight examines that theme from various perspectives: how to manage corporate transformation, what we understand about personal resilience, whether the United States can reclaim its leadership role in innovation and invention, and how executives in strategy and marketing are reconceiving the work they do.