Marketing. Don't ask what it is. Ask what and whom it is for.

Last week a post on Twitter asked for a definition of Marketing. I referred them to Regis McKenna’s Marketing is Everything paper from 30 years ago.

Last week a post on LinkedIn presented a Google Trends analysis of interest in several contemporary marketing “gurus”. Someone beat me to the obvious response that there is no current “guru” who comes close to the influence and resonance of Professor Philip Kotler of Northwestern University; not only today, but over 50 years and (read on) into the future.

The soi-disant gurus today are attention seekers who write columns and speak at conferences.?Occasionally they write books. They contradict knowledge built from successful marketing and brands from the past; or lambast the shiny toys and brand fails in the news today. Their critiques in the moment do no justice to Marketing, a rich and complex discipline that reflects the culture, arts, sociologies, economics, and technologies of the times.

Kotler stands head and shoulder above everyone else in Marketing. He has taught and evolved applications of the Marketing concept over decades. ?In the 1960’s he popularized fundamentals, like the 4P’s, relevant to mass manufacturing, distribution, and media.

In the 1970’s, straight out of college, I took a train to London for my first job as a statistician in a Marketing team. My first mentor directed me to Kotler’s Principles of Marketing (there have been many editions; this link is to a 2020 global edition).

Researching a book, I have revisited Kotler’s journey. Last month I heard him talk at a World Happiness Foundation event convened by my former colleague Luis Gallardo .

The 1st edition of Principles of Marketing was published in 1967. It remains the essential textbook for students as well as the grounding for aspiring practitioners. Over the years his work has continually evolved, presenting marketing best practices fit for their times, anticipating what is to come. This is a summary.

• Marketing 1.0 communicates the essentials of brand features and functions in delivering value and introduces customer segmentation.
• Marketing 2.0 moves beyond brand’s functionality to assert the importance of consumer emotions as a higher factor in decision-making.
• Marketing 3.0 presents consumers as multi-dimensional humans, locates brands within culture, and develops engagement and community.
• Marketing 4.0 reflects the shift to digital, defining next-generation marketing for a connected world in which fragmenting sub-cultures means mass attention is harder to gain.
• Marketing 5.0 envisions the impact of technology and on-demand, data-driven business models, with context, experience, voice, and “transmedia” storytelling increasingly automated by AI.

Further to chronicling the evolution of Marketing for commercial goals, Kotler has championed the relevance of the Marketing concept to achieve Social, Economic and Ecological outcomes.

He has advanced “Social Marketing” as the application to the planning and implementation of social change.?He observed that the defining skills of marketers can be applied to discover the needs and wants of citizens as well as consumers. Marketers are thus well-equipped to create, communicate and deliver programs and services to improve well-being and lives across society.

He anticipated behavioral science and “nudging”, summarizing Social Marketing as “a bridging mechanism between the behavioral scientist’s knowledge of human behavior with the socially useful implementation of what knowledge allows” and that “marketers have known this for over 100 years. So behavioral economics is nothing new. It is just another word for marketing.”

He continues to anticipate the relevance of Marketing to the needs of the times.

In Confronting Capitalism: Real Solutions for a Troubled Economic System he asks Marketers to continue to address customer needs but not encourage overconsumption or cause environmental damage. Kotler is recommending that Marketers operate within economist Kate Raworth’s Doughnut and take as their goal not a singular financial metric but the triple bottom line of Profits, People, and Planet. “I believe that companies should design their entire business model by thinking of what is good for their customers, employees, suppliers, distributors, and society as a whole.”

Kotler has also argued for Demarketing . Combining his two recent works, Marketing 5.0 recognizes that the future demands continuing innovation in data science, scalable technologies, and automation. Every business must master these heuristics . Capitalism has delivered astounding wealth, and the latest technologies promise to maintain the momentum; but only for a few. The resulting prosperity has accrued to a small proportion of the world’s population. And even for the fortunate it has not been matched by gains in well-being and happiness. In Confronting Capitalism, Kotler asks us to re-think what Marketing is for, and for whom.

This ambition should make us see the debates about “performance”, “attention” and “mental availability” as narrow and limiting. Cynics will reject the idea that Marketing can do more.?Even Marketers may be concerned that their role in “persuasion” to achieve good outcomes will be construed as “manipulation”. Yet we should not be ashamed about offering and applying our capabilities to play a role in solving social and ecological problems.?

Exciting times. Perhaps I’ll get on another train and start again.

Stewart Pearson

Stewart has lived, worked, and traveled in the UK, Europe, Asia, and throughout the U.S. He now lives in the Evergreen State and Seattle. He has four decades of experience in marketing and advertising focused on building client brands directly.?He was Global Chief Client Officer and Vice-Chairman of Wunderman, a unit of WPP. David Ogilvy once sent him a telex from India and Lester Wunderman told him stories of Picasso from the village in France where both had lived in different times. Stewart is on LinkedIn and Twitter , and at [email protected] .