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Conversations with Marketing Masters
By Laura Mazur and Louella Miles
Publishers
John Wiley & Sons Ltd., © 2007
Pp.: 236
Reviewed by
Dhiraj Sharma, Academic Associate, ISB. |
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Written by Laura Mazur and Louella Miles, co-partners of Writers 4 Management, UK, ‘Conversations with Marketing Masters’ is a grand work that brings ideas, opinions and experiences of living legends of marketing in a book.
The book has tête-à-têtes with twelve masters, viz. Philip Kotler, David Aaker, Jean-Claude Larreche, Regis McKenna, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, John Quelch, Al Ries, Don Schultz, Patricia Seybold, Jack Trout and Lester Wunderman. The book is organised in 11 chapters, each of which is dedicated to a master, except Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, who share a chapter jointly. Each chapter is divided in to three parts: about the master, followed by the interview and his/her selected publications. Each interview takes us through professional journey of the master, his/her current views on marketing and finally more personal questions like ‘what makes them tick?’
‘Conversations with Marketing Masters’ spells clearly the different perspectives of the masters on marketing issues. For example, few key responses by the masters on current challenges of marketing were: growing ineffectiveness of mass media (Kotler, and Aaker), achieving customer centricity (Pepper, Rogers), capturing consumer insights (Seybold, Trout, and Wunderman), developing loyalrelationship with consumers (McKenna), and rising power of |
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distribution channel (Ries). Each one of these is justified by masters through emphatic arguments and relevant business examples.
A few other books like ‘The Guru Guide™ to Marketing’ by Joseph H Boyett and Jimmie T Boyett (Wiley, 2003) and ‘Gurus on Marketing’ by Sultan Kermally (Thorogood, 2003) also discuss the ideas of marketing masters, but in the words of the author(s). The former tries to classify and compare most of the masters’ ideas, whereas the latter brings out a few selected masters’ contributions to the marketing world. Here, Conversations with Marketing Masters stands out as an original description of masters’ views in their own words, progressing in a conversation mode. Since the book follows an interview format, it captures candid responses, which even biographies could not have come out with. In interviewing masters on contemporary marketing practices to memories of their personal life, the author maintained the spontaneous flow of conversations to make it read like a novel.
The book, powered with academic and consulting experiences of masters, is a must read for academicians and marketers alike who are sure to gain not only in terms of contemporary marketing insights but also by learning what established themselves in their professional and personal life.
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