The marketing guru and perennial member of the Thinkers 50 list of the world’s top business thinkers talks about the Age of Turbulence, and how marketing fits into it.
Your marketing textbook is in its 13th edition and is used in most MBA Marketing courses worldwide. Are the ‘four Ps’ still a useful framework?
Definitely, because all marketing plans still have to address those four big questions -- Product, Price, Place and Promotion. However, I’m currently working on the 14th edition, and my colleagues and I are developing a new framework that will involve a more holistic set of considerations. What we call ‘holistic marketing’ entails the development, design and implementation of marketing programs, processes and activities that recognize a wide range of interdependencies, including the work of integrated marketing (the four Ps); internal marketing (i.e. getting support from the other functional areas); performance marketing (i.e. developing metrics to indicate what you’ve accomplished); and relationship marketing. So this new concept of holistic marketing goes way beyond just the four P’s.
Until now, many business leaders have operated with a ‘playbook’ based on two underlying market conditions: a bull market and a bear market. Is this approach suitable for the Age of Turbulence?
These two playbooks will always be of some use, depending on whether the business cycle is going up or down, but as I’ve indicated, we are now also dealing with all kinds of unexpected disturbances. Just one disruptive technology entering an industry can have the effect of an earthquake: the ‘plates’ can move and suddenly an industry can find itself destroyed. Look at what happened with Kodak and film: we all stopped buying film for our cameras.
Top Ten Innovation Mistakes a Company Can Make in a Turbulent Economy
1. Fire talent.
2. Cut back on technology.
3. Reduce risk.
4. Stop product development.
5. Allow boards to replace growth-oriented CEOs with cost-cutting CEOs.
6. Retreat from globalization.
7. Allow CEOs to replace innovation as a key strategy.
8. Change performance metrics.
9. Reinforce hierarchy over collaboration.
10. Retreat into walled castle.
[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]