Jonathan Knowles is the coauthor of five articles in the Harvard Business Review and twelve in the MIT Sloan Management Review (six of which form “The Strategy of Change” series). His articles have also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Professional Investor, Intellectual Asset Management, the Review of Marketing Research, the Journal of Interactive Marketing, The Marketing Journal and the AMA’s Marketing Management.
He has coauthored chapters on “The Marketing Implications of Financial Accounting” (2021) and “Orientation and Marketing Metrics” (2009), as well as a Marketing Science Institute working paper on “The Value Implications of Corporate Branding in Mergers” (2011).
He is coauthor of the book “Vulcans, Earthlings & Marketing ROI” (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008).
His writing focuses on three main topics – business strategy (especially the role of purpose, reputation, and brand in value creation); mergers (intangible assets, post merger integration, brand architecture); and measurement (economics vs accounting, performance metrics, valuation).
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Article Strategy
The recent spate of corporate scandals and executive misdeeds, including backdating, pretexting, embezzling, anonymous blogging and other unsavory activities, has brought the “reputation imperative” to the top of the agenda for business leaders.
Article Measurement
The concept of brand equity first emerged in the marketing literature of the late 1980s. The use of a financial term for what was actually a customer-based construct has been a highly effective technique for communicating the idea that brands are long-lived business assets that can have significant financial value.
Article Measurement
I was fortunate to collaborate with the great Tim Ambler on this review of how marketing metrics have evolved – but how their key role is still to ensure that a business has a market orientation.
Article Mergers
Our ambitious project to categorize the ten corporate brand options from which merging companies can select – and the messaging that customers, employees and investors will infer from each.
Article Strategy
A light-handed but serious attempt to educate marketers about how to express the business impact of their work. Sponsored by the Institute of Canadian Agencies and coauthored with the vice chairman of Ogilvy & Mather in Canada, this book allowed me to integrate my thoughts around strategy, finance and marketing.