My new column is live at The Drum:
The old marketing world is as dead as Steven Seagal’s acting career after he became a shill for Vladimir Putin. So much has changed that we might as well throw away our copies of Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing and ignore all of David Ogilvy’s advice.
To be successful the industry today, it is crucial to understand the following introductory concepts. Are you sitting comfortably? Pay attention: this will be on the final exam.
“4 Ps” /noun/ 1: The foundation of product marketing theory that is comprised of product, price, place, and promotion. 2. A paradigm based on a century of business, sociological, and psychological research that is now used only by those who are old enough to remember when MC Hammer was popular and women wore shoulder pads. 3: A model that became antiquated the very moment that Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. Compare: 7 Ps of service marketing. Cf., Viagra, Rogaine.
“Brand Love” /noun/ 1: The fact that consumers are always thinking about their relationships with mustard, beer, and detergent. 2: A phrase that is used by marketers to show that people prefer certain brands not out of mere habit, convenience, or price but rather out of desire to take them out to drive-in movies and do mouth stuff. 3: A public act with an inanimate object that got a Leeds man sent to jail for a week in 1994. Compare: brand preference. Cf., He’s Just Not That Into You, objectophilia.