Listening to Professor Philip Kotler, the marketing guru

When Professor Philip Kotler speaks, marketers worldwide listen attentively. Today, in a Zoom call with the professor, over 600 individuals from various time zones joined in. At 93 years old, Mr. Kotler’s energy remains infectious, and his insights are remarkably clear. During the call, Mr. Kotler shared many thought-provoking statements like: “I can teach anyone marketing in a day, but will they master it? I can’t say myself that I have mastered marketing”. He added:

1. I will be sad to see if AI replaces good teachers of marketing – this is a puzzling and scary question, I am going to give a thought on that.
2. We are in a time when all jobs have to reevaluate their value. What is the important word in marketing: I will say VALUE – why you have to pay someone if you don’t add value, creating and communicating a value in the minds of the target market on a profit.
3. In the terms of Supermarkets when we do high tech we need to remember high touch as well – Target recommends the shelves should be restocked during the day when customers are shopping so that there is someone to ask and help.
4. With AI, it is not about replacing humans, it is about making the human part of the value increase with machines.
5. In a new book I am writing, I am having a chapter titled I for marketing and then another Generative AI for marketing. Generative AI is ChatGPT, earlier I went to Google to get answers, now I go to ChatGPT: I asked it who are the ten leaders in the world, the (former) New Zealand Prime Minister came up as the number 1, I wanted to see whether Modi from India was there, but I am not going to answer that here.
6. Earlier Marketing was taken by people who didn’t like Mathematics, now it is different. If you are good with Mathematics and AI, you will get a job in Marketing, they need you.

Professor recommended the audience read the newly released book: “Proximity by Robert C. Wolcott and Kaihan Krippendorff, Columbia Business School Publishing”.