Q: We are college freshmen and reading fans of your Friday column. At the start of the school year, our marketing professor asked us to read your Marketing Rx column and to take turns from one small working group to another in reporting on an MRx column that was about a basic marketing problem. We do this on the Monday class following an MRx Friday appearance. We learn a lot about marketing from your columns. At last Monday’s session, we asked our marketing professor how come you are not transforming your selection of “The Best of Marketing Rx” into a Marketing 101 textbook.
Our professor said he used to assign Philip Kotler’s Marketing Management book as his course’s textbook. But since about three years ago, he said this book has become prohibitively expensive. And so he has resorted to Kotler’s co-author who writes about marketing as it’s practiced in the Philippines. We learned from him that you were Philip Kotler’s co-author. But when we asked again our question, our professor was quick to tell us: “Why don’t you write Dr. Ned and Ardy themselves and get the answer direct from the horses’ mouths?” And so we did. So please tell us why not?
A: We appreciate your kind note but we don’t understand why you did not identify yourselves, your school and your professor so that we can also thank you and maybe even meet you all in person. From your two short paragraphs, we think we have a pretty good idea who your marketing professor and school may be. The fact that your professor has been recommending Philip Kotler’s book suggests to us that he’s probably a fairly recent “balik-bayan” from the US where Kotler’s book is the standard marketing text.
Two answers
We’ve been asked more than a couple of times this question and its frequency is in fact our reason for answering it via this column.
We give two simple answers. The first is about Marketing Rx’s coverage and content. They are too wide and many times dealing with esoteric marketing topics. We saw that you were conscious of this when you said that you report only “on an MRx column that was about a basic marketing problem.” So while it’s possible to make the transformation you wanted to see, the writing and rewriting task called for is too much and more importantly, we see it as unnecessary.
That leads us to our second answer, which says that there’s already a very good localized version of Kotler’s Marketing Management. In fact, in its 2010 second edition, Josiah Go’s “Marketing Fundamentals” stands as equal to and even superior to Kotler’s textbook.
Chiqui Escareal Go, Josiah’s wife, is co-author in the second edition. The partnership strengthened and lent synergy to the book in both content and presentation.
This book has been around for a long time now and is widely used. Both the Philippine Marketing Association and the Association of Marketing Educators have been endorsing Josiah and Chiqui’s book ever since its first edition. This tells us that your professor must be a non-member of these two respectable professional marketing associations. Sorry for going back to this guessing game.
Marketer’s standpoint
The content of the husband-and-wife book is presented in 10 chapters. Those 10 chapters are organized according to the latest definition of marketing. In the 1990s and earlier, marketing was largely about the marketing mix or the 4 Ps. It was an understanding of marketing from the marketer’s standpoint. Towards the new millennium, marketing took on the primacy of the consumer and her priority needs and values. That’s what the STP [segmenting, targeting and positioning] was all about.
Everything must now start with the consumers and their segments. And so Josiah and Chiqui’s “Marketing Fundamentals” started with segmentation before proceeding to the marketing mix. It’s a Marketing 101 book on the latest in marketing.
Each of the book’s chapters explains and illustrates marketing fundamentals by real-life cases, long as well as short ones but all well researched. Each case’s supporting research is not just cut-and-paste materials sourced or lifted from a brand’s website. When you read those cases, it’s clear that each case’s materials and facts came from the authors’ personal interview of the key actors of the case. And then there are examples cited to lend familiarity to a specific marketing concept. Those examples are well chosen in how each fit into the marketing logic being explained. They’re not name-dropping examples.
Consider the book’s Chapter 4 on “Product Strategy.” This is its longest chapter spanning pages 132 to 240. There are five sections to this chapter covering: (1) “Product,” (2) “Branding,” (3) “Packaging,” (4) “Managing Product Lines” and (5) “Green Marketing.” The chapter starts with a long case on a “Featured Young Marketer” in the person of Toby Claudio, Head of Retail and Business Development of Toby’s Sports. For the “Product” section alone (pages 132 to 191), there were 26 insight-rich short cases, and 54 interesting but pertinent examples! These were all well-written and easy-to-read cases, and detailed enough examples on local brands and companies.
The book’s senior author, Josiah Go, is a rare breed. He’s a top-rated effective marketing and sales educator as well as a successful businessman and entrepreneur. In the classroom and in his seminars, he is able to bring an analytical mind that explains marketing concepts and techniques with the practical common sense of an experienced practitioner marketer. I saw Josiah’s depth of understanding of marketing when I teamed up with him in his seminars on the once very popular Blue Ocean Strategy. Josiah’s understanding of Blue Ocean Strategy surpassed that of the author, Kim Chan, because of Josiah’s practical down-to-earth orientation.
So there’s our answer to your question. Here’s a bonus idea. Perhaps the best class gift to give your marketing professor is Josiah and Chiqui’s book. How about it?
Keep your questions coming. Send them to us at MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net or drnedmarketingrx@gmail.com. God bless!