Jason (00:53)
Hi, Professor Dave, it is great to see you as always. Well, thank you. Thank you for joining us for the Wise in Five You've been such a big part of The Wisory and I'm thrilled to have this opportunity to chat with you. Before we dive into our Wise in Five questions, would you mind sharing a little bit about your amazing background just for our viewers and listeners?

Dave Reibstein (00:56)
It's wonderful to see you once again.

Well, I'm currently a professor at the Wharton School and I've been here for more years than I'm willing to admit. If you want to know my background, I'm not sure how much of my childhood you really want. But I'll say I grew up in Kansas, so I'm a Midwest guy. I went to the University of Kansas. I got two different degrees there. I ended up getting my PhD at Purdue.

Jason (01:29)
Yeah

Dave Reibstein (01:43)
And my PhD was in marketing and consumer behavior with a strong emphasis on multivariate statistics and econometrics. And that's a lot of what my overall training was as it applies to My first academic job that I had was at Harvard. I left Harvard. I came to Wharton.

⁓ I left Wharton, I went out as a visiting professor to Stanford with the possibility of staying. I ended up coming back to Wharton to become the vice dean and the dean of the graduate division at the Wharton School. And I've been here ever since. I love being here. It's great being an academic and this is a wonderful place to be doing it. I didn't tell you that I spent a little bit of time in industry.

And what I typically say is I spent some time, I don't say I spent time in industry, I spent time selling drugs. It turns out that was for a pharmaceutical company. But I'm very delighted to be in an academic position where I've been for a long time.

Jason (02:42)
Well, and I know the students are thrilled that you're in that academic position. I mean, I can't imagine how many CMOs, CEOs, executives that have been in your class that have now gone on to do such amazing things.

Dave Reibstein (02:56)
I've been so impressed by what it is they've done despite whatever they got from my class. So that's good.

Jason (03:02)
Very humble as always. So my first question is where do you find inspiration just in daily life?

Dave Reibstein (03:10)
Well, it's sort of funny. It sort of is a transition from what we were just talking about because to a large degree, I find some of my inspiration from my students. One of the great thrills of being here and the other institutions I've been at is they come from such varied backgrounds, various industries, as well as various parts of the world. And they've got curiosity.

They've got sort of things that they're working on. And to me, that has been the core of where I've gotten a lot of my inspiration. Of course, some of it has come from many, many companies that I've worked with and what it is they're exploring and what it is they're struggling with. And the real reason why I'm here is because of the amazing colleagues that I have.

And I end up getting so much inspiration from them as well.

Jason (04:00)
I love that. Well, and I'm sure it goes both ways knowing you as well as I do. My second question, you you're focused on marketing metrics and brand value, but what inspired that focus? what, I mean, you talked about your, what you did in university and how you move forward, but what was the real inspiration that kind of grew what you're teaching today?

Dave Reibstein (04:21)
So at one point I took a leave of absence from Wharton and I became the executive director of the Marketing and Science Institute. And the Marketing and Science Institute at the time had about 70, 75 member companies from a variety of different industries. And every year

every two years, we would get together with them and we would say, tell us what it is that are the issues that are most pressing for you that you'd like to get more insights from. We take that list, we send it globally, and it sets the agenda for marketing academia worldwide. For several years in a row, the number one topic that people were struggling with was

marketing, how do we measure what its impact is? How do we try and find the marketing performance that we're getting? And what measures should we be using to capture that? And that sort of was the impetus for me to start working on that topic of marketing metrics. And it led to me publishing a series of books on marketing metrics.

Jason (05:28)
Well, that makes perfect sense. would guess as things have progressed, technology and fragmentation of media, that becomes even harder to measure marketing effectiveness.

Dave Reibstein (05:37)
It actually, in many ways, it's gotten easier. Certainly with all of the digitization, we see I can put an ad somewhere and then I could see how many people get exposed to it, but also what that click-through rate is and then what the conversion rate is. So for much of it, it has gotten easier. There's still harder parts, but for much of it, it has actually gotten quite easier.

Jason (06:03)
Well, that makes sense. That's a great perspective. next question really gets into this next generation of marketers and business strategists and to what we just talked about. What skills or traits do you believe are needed for this next generation to lead through this changing market that we're all experiencing?

Dave Reibstein (06:23)
Well, interesting. You say this changing market that we're going through, probably the thing that's most critical, the skill that they need the most is the ability to continue to learn. Because whatever it is they've learned probably won't be applicable in that next phase because things are changing. And so we've got to be able to learn and be open to that particular change. I had a chance to meet

John Seely Brown. I don't know if that name resonates with you or not, but he used to be in charge of Xerox PARC and I heard him talking about it's much more difficult to unlearn than it is to learn. We sort of learn certain things and this is how it has to happen and then when things change we're still in that old mode of this is how it has to happen. We have to unlearn some of those things.

and we have to learn what that next phase is. And I think that's a major skill that people have to have, both the learning as well as the unlearning and sort of giving up some things that we thought were just standard of this is what it is that absolutely happens.

Jason (07:28)
I think that's so smart and I'm shocked that a professor would suggest that learning is a core piece of what people have to do.

Dave Reibstein (07:36)
Yeah, and not surprised, but the unlearning part, that part, know, my students are really good at that part.

Jason (07:40)
Well, then you get to teach them again. I

can drink a cup of wisdom to that.

Dave Reibstein (07:47)
I'll join you.

Jason (07:48)
So we talked a little bit about effectiveness and performance and as it comes to marketing and how you measure it. One of the questions that I have next is, so against that, what advice do you have for business leaders in terms of how they should be investing in marketing activities to drive the types of outcomes, these measurable outcomes that you teach?

Dave Reibstein (08:08)
I'm a big believer in the measurement and looking for those measure measurable outcomes not everything is immediately measurable and there's the the font and so you're talking to a guy who says measure and and yet I'm saying not everything is immediately measurable and in particular when I'm thinking about is there some short-term effects and there's also some long-term effects and

You know, it used to be we saw a lot of money being transferred from advertising to promotional efforts because promotions, you drop a coupon and somebody buys and we get to track that and we don't get to track what that advertising impact is. And so I think one of the cautions is don't always go to those short term effects. There are some long term things that we should be investing in.

And often when we think about long-term effects, what we think about is the brand. We're building this brand. today, what we can think about is brand, but also customers. We're getting customers and having customers as an asset and then being able to retain those customers. Those are sort of long-term effects that could happen.

that we don't get with those necessarily with some of those short-term measures. But we should be trying to track what it is that we're doing that leads to the acquisition of customers, but more importantly, the retention of those customers.

Jason (09:31)
That makes total sense. mean, that gets, there's that term attribution, right? That became popular the past like 15, 20 years, right? And how do you view that in terms of that balance between the long-term and the short-term, especially for mid-size businesses who are kind of tight with their budgets?

Dave Reibstein (09:49)
So what we do with attribution is try to say, what is it, we see someone bought, what is it that really contributed to that? And so much of the attribution models want to sort of give it all the credit to one thing that we did, and it clearly is the collection of these. I ran an ad, I had something online, customers have been out there talking about it, so there's all this social media.

It's the collection of those that are really leading to what is that ultimate purchase ⁓ that's there. And indeed, while I say it's getting easier because I can see an immediate reaction to something, that's not the only cause of what ended up leading to that sale.

Jason (10:19)
Mm-hmm.

Right,

right. mean, have you seen some emerging brands where you would say, you know what, they're doing a good job of investing in the brand and knowing who their customer is that's gonna help them over the longer term to drive the results they're looking for.

Dave Reibstein (10:47)
You're not going to like the example I'm going to use because everybody's used that example and we're tired of hearing about it. But boy, Amazon has done such a great job. They really, really understand the customers, their customers and what it is that works and what doesn't work and recognizing that what works for Jason doesn't necessarily work for Dave. And being able to do that.

Jason (10:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dave Reibstein (11:12)
which in some sense sounds a little creepy to people, but it really is a company that's done such a great job. And every day they're getting more and more data about us and people like us. And they've done a better job than just about any other company I can think of. And I know nobody likes to hear about Amazon anymore, but it's true. It really is.

Jason (11:34)
Yeah,

I completely agree. And for years, they were not profitable, right? Because they were playing the long game and investing in the future. And people had to believe in that, right?

Dave Reibstein (11:46)
So

when you say investing in the future, people think of, they're investing in technology, they're investing in going into other categories. And what they were doing was investing in acquiring customers, investing in retaining those particular customers, figuring out how could I better satisfy them. That's where the investment was. And that's what it is that was paying off for them. And as you say, paying off for them in the long term.

Jason (11:59)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Reibstein (12:12)
which has gotten their valuations up to where they are.

Jason (12:14)
Yeah, that's pretty incredible. I think it's a great example. you know, being part of The Wisory being such an important part of The Wisory and offering advice to business leaders, I'm curious where you go for advice. You know, if you've had mentors along the way where you're taking on something new or you want to validate a direction that you're going or just have a challenge that you haven't experienced before.

Dave Reibstein (12:38)
So again, one of the reasons I'm here is to be surrounded by the people that I'm surrounded by and that starts with my colleagues and and they they all come from different perspectives and different parts of the world and so that's one of the places I always turn is looking at them and in many cases, you know

As I said before, my students are my inspiration. They also help me work through things and are really, really good for that. My answer used to be mom. And she was always, you know, just great advice. The original mentor for sure. But it is the people that I'm surrounded with on a day to day basis.

Jason (13:11)
the original mentor.

That's great.

Yeah, well, and what an incredible group of people that you have next door, right?

Dave Reibstein (13:25)
And for sure.

Jason (13:26)
So we've done our five questions and ⁓ no surprise, I'm not gonna grade them, you in the spirit of academia, but you passed with flying colors, right? But I do have a bonus question for you. So as people engage with you on the Wiser and thank you for being part of it again, but what questions or advice should they seek from you? What are you best positioned to help them with?

Dave Reibstein (13:37)
Uh-oh.

Well, probably starts with what should you be measuring? You know, as you're spending money on marketing, actually back up for a second, what should you be spending on? So I spend a lot of time working with companies about how much money they should be spending. So how much money they should be spending, but then how to allocate it on what. And then how do we measure what that impact is and trying to think through that.

Probably another topic is how do you think about the value of your brand? I believe there's a financial value to the brand that you have and that could be the case if you are Amazon or if you are Google or Apple and those big companies that have big brands, but if you're my local florist, she has a brand and people say, so

Louisa, she does the flowers and arranges them in absolutely the best way and she's known by her customers. And so you could be small, you could be big, you have a brand and how do you think about what that value of that brand is? And then I think auxiliary to that is, so how far could you extend that brand? Should you use the same name when you go into other categories?

So if she decides, you know, this florist business is doing great, I think I'm going to do cookies as well. Should she call those Louisa cookies? That's the type of questions that I end up engaging with companies and be glad to chat with people.

Jason (15:19)
Well, Louisa would be very fortunate to talk with you and get your wisdom as would the rest of the folks that are coming to The Wisory. So Professor Dave, I can't thank you enough for being part of it, for being such a good friend and for sharing your wisdom with so many. So thank you.

Dave Reibstein (15:37)
So thank you and I always enjoy spending time with you. So thank you for having me on here today.

Jason (15:42)
Well, I do too, my pleasure. Be well.