goodbye and good luck mr. kotler

36 I Expert ise f ro m S o l v a y B u s i n e s s S c h o o l I June 2007

Goodbye and good luck, Mr Kotlerby Christian Blümelhuber

Goodbyes are never easy. They're particularly hard when you have to bid

your adieus to people whom you like and respect, and to stars that have as

much meaning and influence as Mister Kotler. However, regardless of how

hard it is, dear Kotlerians, it is time for to say goodbye. Your reign is over.

We, the marketers, are leaving the “Kotlerian sector”!

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June 2007 I Expert ise f ro m S o l v a y B u s i n e s s S c h o o l I 37

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Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and AlanGreenspan, Herbert Simon,Peter Drucker and MichaelPorter: the only marketing guy

who fits into that line is Philip Kotler, theone and only King of Marketing.

For generations of students, market-ers, and consumers, he IS marketing. Likenobody else, he stands for the “modernconcept of marketing”. He helped toestablish marketing’s credibility as both adiscipline and a practice. He spread thecultural influence of marketing aroundthe globe, and for this reason has heraised standards of living and creatednew jobs. We could tell a long storyabout inventing and recycling, of hopesand beliefs. But to make it short: he ismodern marketing’s superstar.

Sherwin Rosen (1981) defined super-stars as phenomena wherein relativelysmall numbers of people dominate theactivities in which they engage –andearn enormous amounts of money. That’snot only the case for athletes and moviestars, but also for celebrity CEOs andÜber-Academics. We, the people, weretrained to see the world through a lenscoloured by the number of ‘hits’(Anderson 2006) –and the fields ofmarketing research and education are noexception. Everyone would agree that ourfield’s winner who “takes it all” (Abba) isthe S.C. Johnson & Son DistinguishedProfessor of International Marketing atthe Kellogg School of Management,Northwestern University, Mr Philip Kotler.

The results of his stardom are evidentto everyone interested in the marketingfield. Generations of students, academics,managers and consultants used Kotler´smodels, discussed them, applied them,and distributed them. In their eyes, there

seems to be imperfect substitution con-cerning his ideas around the so-calledmarketing concept, around customer satisfaction as the main marketing goal,around toolboxes and flowcharts, andespecially around APIC*, STP* and theFour P´s*. In other words, around the ele-ments that define and bring alive the“Modern Marketing Approach”.

But modernity has lost its glamourand explanatory power. And so more andmore scholars, academics, and evenmanagers claim that marketing needsreform, perhaps a revolution –at least anew paradigm.

The Frank Sinatra of marketingFrank Sinatra’s time is over. He had hishits and appearances, but now he’s dead.Not only buried in the warm cover of

Cathedral City’s soil, but also in people’smemories.

The same is true for Mr Kotler. He isdead –not physically, but, followingStephen Brown as Alan Smithee (1997),his thinking is dead. Like Frankie Boy, heis celebrated and recycled– perhaps notwith a museum in Las Vegas, and proba-bly not with a Broadway show, but withlots of nostalgic fans who continue to

play the old songs and keep the lightburning. But those old songs are justromantic fiction. They remind us ofbygone times: the times of hierarchic,rational, ordered and systematic manag-ed institutions, the times of Ford andTaylor, of the assembly line and FMCG,the modern times.

We are in a new state, a new era now characterised as post-postmodern,reflexive, liquid or hyper-modern (see forexample Bauman 2000; 2005; Lipovetsky2005; Beck, Giddens & Lash 1994). The passage from the solid phase of modern-ity to a more liquid phase ofmodernity leaves behind modernity’sclearly defined borders, tiresome butreassuringly stable routines, slow pace ofchange, predictable futures, and longusefulness of skills – in other words:modernity’s security! What we are seeing

now is a condition in which structures,institutions, patterns of routines, choicesor acceptable behaviours can no longerkeep their shape.

It is bringing about a collapse in thelong-term thinking, planning, and actingthat used to be a prerequisite for strate-gies and strategic marketing. We are nowconfronted with lives that are more andmore fragmented, with parallel strategiesand series of new beginnings and end-ings, of decouplings and embeddings.And each new step, each new episode inour lives and our marketing calls for adifferent set of skills and a differentarrangement of assets (Bauman 2007,page 3).

Stability is gone. The future is lesspredictable. The value of skills and assetschanges rapidly. Modernity is over. ButKotler seems to be still alive. Why is that?

The manager´s teddy bearIn liquid times, new concepts are

everywhere but APIC, the Four Ps and STPwill survive and live forever. Teachers,consultants, and managers around theglobe use Kotler´s ideas, spread Kotler’s

To cope with a fast, unpredictable, and insecure

world, people need the continuous presence of

something familiar.

How can you profit from post-Kotler marketing ideas?

The InBev Baillet Latour Chair at Solvay Business School is committed todelivering new ideas, better concepts, models and theories for the liquideconomy. If you are interested in profiting from our research and efforts,or in participating or sponsoring our studies, then contact me:[email protected] those who want to learn, understand, and profit from the top ideas ofmarketing´s long tail – please apply for membership of our “EuropeanMarketing & Sales Lab”: This new Solvay programme delivers the latestmarketing thinking and concepts, and brings you together with top-researchers and professionals. More information at www.solvay.edu/lab


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influences into the business world, andreproduce him again and again. Althoughsome may doubt, the vast majority ofmanagers seem to love him, follow him,applaud him, and apply his ideas.

We can explain this commitment andbehaviour with an interesting theory ofOdo Marquard, a German philosopher.His “teddy bear effect” explains thefamiliar situation of a fast-changing

world that is occupied by slow, change-resistant people, who have to align bothrapidity (the future), and slowness (the past). To cope with the fast, unpredictable, and insecure world, peo-ple need the continuous presence ofsomething familiar.

Like a child with a teddy bear, doubt-ful and anxious managers carry the mostimportant classics as reminiscence andgrounding. The more our presence andfuture seems to be the hotbed of uncer-tainties, the more we’ll have to carry thepast – like a teddy bear – into the future.

The harder it is to understand markets, customers, strategies, and suc-cesses, the more important seems to beMr Kotler as marketing’s most importantteddy bear. He is the manager’s link tothe past.

For sure, there is only one PhilipKotler. Many follow him –but there isalso a group that doubts. His reign isunder attack because the world haschanged.

Kotler’s successors and thelong tail* of marketingIn 1960, McGregor introduced Theory Xand Theory Y on the management ofemployees. Whereas Theory X represent-ed an old style of management in which employees were mindless robots, Theory Y represented a new style inwhich employees are creative and acceptresponsibility. We could argue that it’snow time that marketing switched froma Kotlerite Theory P (Push/Pull, 4Ps) to anew Theory (as for example suggested byUrban 2006). I don’t think that that’s thebest answer. It’s certainly time to quitTheory P, but following Lyotard’s legacythat posits the end of metanarratives(Lyotard 1979), there is no place for aGrand Theory in post-post-modern times.There is no single theory that couldreplace the modern concept. There is noclear and simple call, like “Follow Kotlerand you will have success!” that could beinterpreted as THE marketing credo of amodern world. Grand ideas have lostcredibility.

In post-post-modern, liquid, reflexiveeconomies, we not only face more com-

plexity, but sheer volume. New conceptsare everywhere. Some of them, likeCustomer Experience Management orBeautiful Corporations, may get or mayalready have had their “season in thesun” (Terry Jacks). But lots are hidden industy shelves, in the most obscure cor-ners of the web or in weird scientificjournals.

We could read this situation as tyran-ny, as the paradox of choice: lots ofchoices, but less satisfaction. But wecould also read this situation as a varietyof possibilities, where you can find themodel, concept or idea that really fitsyour needs, your situation, your company,brand, and products. Certainly, there’s alot crap in this “Long Tail” of marketing,but also there will surely be THE one ideathat a manager could, or should, havecherry-picked.

When Anderson (Anderson 2006)asks us to think of culture as an oceanand of islands as the only features abovethe surface, the hit-rate over the yearsmean that the biggest island on themarketing globe is undoubtedly occupiedby the Kotlerians. However, islands arejust tips of vast undersea mountains.When (information) costs and efforts ofdistribution fall, it’s like the water levelfalling in the ocean. New islands surface.And instead of a few hits, we’ll uncover hundreds of smaller, but more beautiful,lesser occupied, and therefore moreinteresting isles.

Like our culture and economy, mar-keting is shifting away from a focus on arelatively small number of hits, main-stream products, markets, and conceptsat the head of a demand curve, andinstead is moving towards a number ofniches in the tail. And what is true forinformation products like books andmusic is surely true for the informationproduct per se: the information.Marketing will get richer and more effec-tive when it applies concepts, theories orideas that really fit to a situation, abrand, a culture etc.

Breaking free from Kotler, the HitMan, means more variety in marketing,better fitting solutions, better results,and higher profits.

A long tail can only survive when thecosts of reaching the niches and findingthe ideas fall dramatically. When man-agers find filters and navigators that leadthem through the tail, marketing will bereborn. In a Long-Tail-Post-Kotler-Oceanof Marketing Ideas, marketing blogs,

The new logic seems to be quite the opposite of the

traditional Kotlerian mass-marketing approach.

• Born 1966 in Freising/Germany• University of Munich: Master of

Business Administration (1993),PhD. (2000), assistant professor

• Technical University Munich:Professor for Marketing (2003-2005)

• Solvay Business School: holderof the Inbev-Baillet LatourChair for Euromarketing, pro-fessor at Univerité Libre deBruxelles (since 2005)

• Since 2002: Assistant Directorof the Center on Global brandLeadership, a joint platform ofthe Columbia University, theUniversity of Munich, SeoulUniversity, and the ESADE inMadrid.

• Developer and Director of the“European Marketing and SalesLab“.

• Research: Brand-Management,Euro-Marketing, SubjectiveCommunications

• Research Methods: Empirical:qualitative and quantitative,interpretative research

• Co-Founder of “newsportsGmbH” and Innovator of twosports (SOCCAFIVE and J-TEN-NIS -(now Mickeys Tennis: soldto Disney-)

• Consulting for InternationalCompanies, including Direkt-AnlageBank, Henkel, O2, Pro-Sieben, Gore

• Well-known Speaker atConferences (like FIFA-Football-Congress Munich 2005, severalBrand Association Meetings)

• Inhouse-Training for companieslike DaimlerCrysler, LaBraas,Gore, L´Oréal

Christian Blümelhuber

[email protected]

June 2007 I Expert ise f ro m S o l v a y B u s i n e s s S c h o o l I 39

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marketing journals and marketing pro-grammes like the European Marketingand Sales Lab can be the Santa Marias.Professors and journalists, bloggers andreal experts have to filter out the noiseand crap and so will increase the qualityof marketing in general and –morespecifically– of the marketing concept inuse.

Against Kotler: new topics and ideas There are hundreds of interesting ideas,but the few that stand out will be themain islands, the hits, and the beacons ofmarketing in liquid times: a consumer’smarketing!

Perhaps the most important newcontribution to the book of “GrandMarketing Theories” (see the discussionabove) comes from Stephen Vargo andRobert Lusch (2004). They suggest noth-ing less then a “New Dominant Logic ofMarketing”, that synthesises key aspectsof actual marketing thoughts –such asresource-advantage theory and relation-ship marketing.

This would-be new paradigm is sohighly abstract and broad that it is beingdiscussed as the strongest candidate toprovide THE marketing framework of ourtime. This new logic is service-centredrather then goods-centred. It focuses onoperant instead of operand resources, isrelational and not transactional, andinterprets the customer as a co-producerof value. Briefly, the new logic seems tobe quite the opposite of the traditionalKotlerian mass-marketing approach, soit’s an obvious suggestion, as any class onformal creativity will agree.

The most important aspect and mainidea of this logic is, in my view, the conceptualisation of the consumer as aco-creator who takes an increasinglyactive role in the processes of production,marketing and consumption. If we tookthis idea to the next level, than we woulddiscuss a “marketing of consumers” –marketing that re-empowers cus-tomers, that allows them, and not justthe company, to drive a market. Suchmarketing goes beyond ”poll-itics” andre-emerges as a toolbox for the post-,hyper or liquid consumer. Marketing’srole could become that of facilitating orco-ordinating the efforts of members ofa community or tribe around a product,service, or brand. That’s a co-producer,not a provider role (see for example Firat& Dholakia 2006).

We and our models, theories, andconcepts should accept that marketing isbecoming everyone’s role. It is no longerjust the role of professional managerialcadres educated at top business schoolsor graduates of expensive trainee programmes at Unilever or P&G. Such anidea defines marketing a societal activityand overcomes the implicit bias of themarketer’s perspective.

More flexibility – andmore luck in marketingmanagementLet me follow the Kotlerian path of mar-keting-management that is marked by 4 P´s and directed through APIC, where

the P – “planning” – of course (consistentwith the P-approach) stands out.Everything seems to be planned, andplanned: from communication to design,from strategies to product usages. But:• Had the big successes really beenplanned, analysed, implemented, andcontrolled? Or did Post-Its, Penicillin, orViagra just happen accidentally? Didn’tthey just appear, like a rainbow? Haven’tthe companies just been lucky? Didn´tthey exploit an opportunity instead offollowing a business plan?• Do consumers really use and under-stand products, services, and brands, as itwas planned in the marketing depart-ment? Hijacked brands (Wipperfürth

Experimentation is encouraged, luck is accepted,

and inexperienced employees are welcomed to

create weird ideas.

Marketing conceptsAs a reference for 4Ps, APIC, and STP see any of Kotler’s Textbooks. The latest is the12th edi-tion of Marketing Management, co-authored by Kevin Lane Keller (2006 published by Pearson).

4Ps. Marketing activities come in many forms. The most famous set of activities was established by McCarthy, who classified all tools into four groups, which are called the Four P´sand can be interpreted as the “holy quadruplet” of a “Kotlerian Marketing” approach: product,price, place (distribution), and promotion (communication).

APIC. Analysis, Planning, Implementation, and Control: these are the four steps of the (market-ing) management process.

STP. This stands for a core concept of modern marketing management: Segmentation,Targeting, and Positioning. It starts with the idea that nobody likes the same hotel rooms,movies, or cookies. Therefore, marketers divide up markets into segments, identify and profiledistinct groups of buyers, decide which segments to serve, and position the offering in theminds of the target buyers (which means: deliver central benefits to that group).

Long Tail. The Long Tail is the colloquial name for the distribution curve where a high-frequen-cy amplitude population is followed by a low-amplitude population. In many cases, the low-amplitude part (the Long Tail) can comprise the majority of the whole “population”. The LongTail is seen as a business model where “products” of low volume can collectively make up amarket share that rivals or even exceeds the few hits or best-sellers in a market.

Brown, Stephen. Some would label him the Anti-Kotler. Stephen is a marketing professor ofUlster University and has published numerous articles that contradict and provoke “classical”thinking. He is “Alan Smithee” who “killed” Kotler in a European Journal of Marketing publica-tion of 1997 titled “Kotler is dead”. He also asked managers to tease and torment their customers (Harvard Business Review, Oct/2001), has identified Harry Potter as an outstandingrole-model of successful marketing (Brown 2005), and has promoted a “Celtic” marketingapproach.


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2005), twisted servicescapes (Aubert-Gamet 1997), or Doppelgänger images(Thompson, Rindfleisch & Arsel 2005) areamong the concepts that explain anddiscuss the high flexibility of customerswhen they use products, services, andbrands, in an unintended way.

All these aspects, flexibility, non-intentional designs and even luck can ofcourse (and please recognise my“Kotlerian loop” now:) be managed. Notin an APIC way, but in a way that is moreconsistent with our fast-changing environment.

Follow Louis Pasteur, who once said,“luck favours the prepared mind”. And tryto understand what your customers real-ly sense, feel, think, and do. Embracequalitative, ethnographic studies. Bet onseveral horses, not just one. Be prepared!These seem to be calls for a “rationallogic” for a marketing management ofour times. Not convinced yet? That’s OK,but you should be as unconvinced as youare about the classic APIC model.

Kotler, the comeback kid!Most champions do not clear the stockvoluntarily, and this applies to Mr Kotler,too. He tried to keep up with theBrown’s*, and presented “new” topics andideas that seem to fit better in post-modern times.

My feelings about this are ambiva-lent. On one hand, Kotler proves his“bondage” to the past. Take his attemptto promote the idea of “holistic market-ing”. Together with his new co-author ofMarketing Management –Kevin LaneKeller, another Überfather, but on BrandManagement– he calls for a more integrated marketing that embraces allstakeholders and functions. This is easyto understand, and it sounds great. Nodoubt thousands of managers will followthat suggestion, because “it makessense”.

So far, so good? Ah! Bad! Surely it’sjust another placatory sweet or poisonpill, another teddy bear for managersstuck in the past? Isn’t this orchestrationjust another modern concept makinginteresting promises that cannot be ful-filled? Doesn’t it make more sense to fol-low different, parallel strategies ratherthan just one holistic one? Shouldn’t webelieve in Sperm-Strategies instead ofintegration? Didn’t we leave the modernsector? Didn’t we break down that wall?On the other hand, Kotler, together with

his co-authors, promotes unconventionaland interesting ideas. Take serendipity,ethics, and driving markets as examples(Kumar, Scheer & Kotler 2000; Kotler2006), and understand that Kotler notonly covers and interprets the songs orconcepts of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, butalso drives marketing in a new direction.For example, he introduced the market-driving phase as a new step or orienta-tion a company can adopt towards themarketplace. This phase triggers industrybreakpoints, comes from a visionary (andnot a planner or marketing “machine”)and focuses more on potential than onexisting customers.

Experimentation is encouraged, luckis accepted, and inexperienced employ-ees are welcomed to create weird ideas.Doesn’t that sound post-Kotler?Absolutely. These attempts prove hismarketing aptitude for betting on theright horse. And for that we praise him,love him and follow him. Or is this allonly a marketing-trick in line withBrown’s Harry-Potter-Marketing-Tralala(Brown 2005)? Shouldn’t we interpretthese attempts as ornamental additionsto his modern house? Some of you willremember the credo of Adolf Loos, themodern Austrian architect and critic whodefined “ornament as crime”. We couldsee Kotler´s latest articles as a crime onhis original ideas, since they are hard tounderstand, even harder to follow and –hardest of all for a modern Kotlerian–impossible to integrate into a holisticKotlerian concept!

Thank you, Mr Kotler, and goodbyeKotler is by no means dead. Kotler himselfis Post-Kotler. It’s his followers, theKotlerians, who are stuck in the past. His modern ideas live in these managersas cultural influences –his numerous followers simply don’t write him off.

But remember that we live in thecomplicated, insecure times of a “de-Americanisation of marketing thought”(Venkatesh, Penaloza & Firat 2006), thattotally differs from a pre-9/11, stablemodern setting. Change is not an option,it’s a necessity. Break free from “modern”Kotler. Kill this Kotler in your marketingmindset, and be more open to the LongTail of marketing, and to ideas that fittoday’s circumstances better. Be ready forthe post-Kotler Kotler. Be ready for yourfuture. !

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Lipovetsky, Gilles (2005).Hypermodern Times.Cambridge, Polity.Lyotard, Jean-Francois(1979). La condition post-moderne. Paris, Les éditions de minuit.Rosen, Sherwin (1981). “The Economics of Superstars.”The American EconomyReview 71(5): 845-858.Smithee, Alan (1997).“Kotler is dead!” EuropeanJournal of Marketing 31(3/4):317-325.Thompson, Craig, AricRindfleisch & Zeynep Arsel(2005). “Emotional Brandingand the Strategic Value of the Doppelgänger BrandImage.” Journal of Marketing70(Jan): 50-64.Urban, Glen (2006).Customer Advocacy. A NewParadigm for Marketing? Does Marketing Need Reform?Jagdish Sheth & RajendraSisodia. Armonk, New York,M.E.Sharpe: 119-125.Vargo, Stephen & RobertLusch (2004). “Evolving aNew Dominant Logic forMarketing.” Journal ofMarketing 68(1): 1-16.Venkatesh, Alladi, LisaPenaloza & Fuat Firat(2006). The Market as a SignSystem and the Logic of theMarket. The Service-DominantLogic of Marketing. Dialog,Debate, and Directions. RobertLusch & Stephen Vargo. New York/London, M.E.Sharpe:251-265.Wipperfürth, Alex (2005).Brand Hijack. MarketingWithout Marketing. New York, Portfolio/PenguinGroup.