Too often, theories created in academic institutions - away from the cut and thrust of business - fail to cut the mustard when those theories are applied in the wild.

In the case of Byron Sharp and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute – the world's largest centre for research into marketing - this is very definitely NOT the case.

Sorin Patilinet, Senior Director for Marketing Effectiveness at Mars, explained how he's been applying Sharp's theories in practice at Mars for more than a dozen years, trying - and routinely failing - to prove him wrong. This was during a recent discussion on Data Malarkey - the podcast about using data, smarter.

"Mars was one of the first companies exposed to Byron's thinking from his book, 'How Brands Grow' and we embedded that thinking into the organisation. We are where we are today because of our early adoption of his evidence-based approach to marketing, which led us to build our own growth model.

"We have access to LOTS of data across our brands and categories and we've used this to test and prove Sharp's laws of marketing. Those rules do still apply today, and it makes us sharp and focused."

No wonder Sorin calls himself ‘the Marketing Engineer’.