Philip Kotler addressing students at JRE Group of Institutes

“I have added a new P to the 4 Ps of Marketing,” marketing Guru Dr Philip Kotler announced to a rapturous audience at JRE Group of Institutions on Friday in Greater Noida. Purpose is the fifth P, which is as important, if not more than the earlier four which include Product, Price, Place and Promotion, he said.

Explaining further, Dr Kotler said that the purpose of most businesses is to earn money. He feels that this is not enough, especially in a country like India. Every marketeer here has to have the regular purpose (to make money) and a higher purpose, which is to make a difference to other people.

To be a good corporate citizen company means that you are not only adding value to the products you deliver to your customers but to also add value to the countrys citizens. In Indias case, the purpose should be two-fold. As a marketeer you should try to make your country technologically advanced. Secondly, you should try to uplift the life of poor people and not just your own.”

Dr Kotler also emphasised the difference between the fields of Sales and Marketing. He cited the example of a Japanese car giant where a marketing aspirant began as a factory worker. After six months in the factory, he moved to the customer care department. The next stop would be sales because Who would want a marketeer to be charge of sales when he has not done sales himself, he said. Although many decide to ditch marketing in favor of sales at this point, for the few who still want to go into marketing, they move onto it post learning about sales.

In terms of the kinds of jobs for marketeers today, Dr Kotler said that future marketeers need to move away from the old medium of communicating messages i.e. creating content for newspapers, television, billboards and so on. The new age medium is the social medium and it is creating three extremely important job profiles for future aspirants of the field of marketing.

The first career opportunity for young people is to become a master of the new digital social medium. Companies know that even if today only 10% of their budget is put aside for marketing through the social media, in around 5 years almost 50% of their budget will be on Facebook, Twitter, Google and the likes.

According to him, it is also important for a marketeer to become analytical in order to figure out new opportunities for his/her company. The new age medium is creating a lot of data. This fact is bringing a lot of problems we like to club under the big data problem. You will not be able to understand the problem by just looking at data. But if you are trained in statistical analysis and understand advanced technology and management, some of you might want to make a career in this aspect of marketing because companies do not know how to open up their big data and find secrets about the trend, gaps and so on.

Finally, being creative will open a whole new avenue for a marketeer. Marketing thrives on creativity. According to Dr Kotler, Richard Branson of Virgin Companies and Steve Jobs of Apple are the best examples of creative minds that he would want to be the head of the marketing department of his company. If a future marketeer is exceptional about ideas and is adept at thinking out of the box, companies will welcome them.

Dr Kotler also emphasised on the importance of lateral thinking. His favorite illustration in this topic is one about cereals. Citing the example of Kellogg cereal company. In a bid to figure out something new that can be done with cereals, the company found out that some people like to munch on dry cereal whenever they felt hungry during the day. This led to the idea of creating health bars, which had more cereal and less chocolate. Today, this has led to the creation of a whole new business, he said.

The concept of stapling yourself to a customer is equally important, he added. A marketeer needs to get insights about his/her customers. You need to understand your target market in order to present a superior product which will get your customers excited. According to Dr Kotler, the best achievement of marketing is when you can create fans and not just customers. The best examples, according to him, would be Apple, Harley Davidson and Google, who have managed to evoke a love relationship with their customers.

Dr Kotler concluded the session by stressing upon the importance of studying finance in the life of a marketeer. “The world is build around economics and finance runs almost every aspect of our lives. Thus, in order to become a good marketeer, I always encourage students to pay special emphasis to finance during their MBA,” he said.