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Manjari Raman
New Delhi, Oct 12: "I want you all to write down the formula for marketing. R leads to STP leads to MM leads to C," dictates Philip Kotler, pausing for effect. Slowly the marketing guru pans the room, aware that more than a 300 CEOs, senior managers, and entrepreneurs are raptly awaiting the magic mantra. Finally, he delivers on his promise: ``The starting point is R, or Research. That will tell you all about Segmentation, Target consumers, and Positioning (STP). From that will evolve your Marketing Mix (MM). And finally, C, which is: Control data to monitor your customer.''
``What he says is quite basic actually,'' whispers a relieved thirty-something marketing director to his colleague in sales, who quickly feigns a laconic smile: ``Yeah, it's like revision.''
Six hours later, when Kotler finally winds up his marathon discourse, it's clear that good professor--currently, he serves as the S C Johnson & Son distinguished professor of international marketing at the Illinois-based Kellogg Graduate School ofManagement--is not a simple man, nor does he propound simple theories.
Instead, like a true mastercraftsman, he plies his craft well to make his marketing tenets appear obvious and oh, so do-able. Like a true gentleman, he refrains from pointing out just how uncommon commonsense actually is--especially when competitive warfare is waging a bloody battle in the marketplace. And for all the been-there, done-that air of some managers in the audience, there is hardly one who will go back richer by at least one tip that will make his company Better! Improved! Longer Lasting!
Make no mistake though: For a marketing megastar, Kotler The Speaker is refreshingly devoid of hype. Instead, subtlety and surely, the man of sales-substance--he has consulted with IBM, Apple, General Electric, Ford, AT&T, Bank of America, DuPont, et al--practices what he preaches during the seminar.
He delivers vast consumer value by dipping deep into an encyclopedic storehouse of strategic information and generously sharing theexperience of other companies. He delights the customers who paid to attend the day-long seminar by personally autographing 300 copies of the ``Winning through value-oriented marketing' notes given to each delegate. And finally, like all good marketeers, he even plugs his sponsors' products--Van Heusen shirts and NIS Sparta's SPIN model--unabashedly.
And after a marathon monologue on marketing maxims, he still good-naturedly agrees to provide a potted version of talk, for the One-Minute Marketeer: ``We've been too busy making brands but have got disconnected from a value delivery system. You need a strong value delivery system and strong value propositions, which are a set of benefits, rather than a USP.'' Amen.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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