Understanding the Accounting and Marketing Benefits of Customer Franchise Value

It can often be difficult — sometimes down right impossible — for marketing and finance to coexist when finance needs short-term results to satisfy their generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and marketing is trying to build overall brand equity, which leads to long-term customer relationship value.

In the diagram below, you can see that there is much involved in arriving at ROI from the marketing point of view. However, the accounting department only sees that the shortest distance to any destination is a straight line — i.e., 2007 marketing activity should lead directly to 2007 sales.

Customer Franchise Value (CFV) can help bridge the gap between the two departments and help marketing give finance what they need. CFV is a metric that gives the CFO a tangible number to get his hands around that explains payback on marketing efforts today — key emphasis on the word today. In short, it’s a “net present value” snapshot of your current customer base.

At the same time, it serves as a more disciplined way of helping marketers understand the tangible, financial value being created over time — not just the strategic value. Basically, it gives marketers the breathing room they need to invest in longer-term sales growth.

In our latest issue of MarketingNPV, you’ll find a robust discussion on this subject that will help you create your own customer franchise value metric system.

Click here for the article on our website.