I don’t remember when I met him, but it was surely in the early eighties when I started working in the Marketing Department of La Constancia and I knew that my Master’s degree from INCAE with a specialization in Banking and Finance would not be enough to achieve a good performance. I had to reinforce my knowledge of Marketing and I became self-taught. I quickly discovered that someone considered “the father of Marketing” existed. I bought your book “Principles of Marketing”, which in those days was something like the syllabary of marketers. This week I found out that he turned 90 and I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic as I remember everything he has taught me throughout my professional life, because I have read so many of his books. The last one I read is “Marketing 4.0 Moving from Traditional to Digital”, published in 2017. I am pending to buy “Marketing 5.0 Technology for Humanity”, just published. I am impressed with how it has managed to stay current.
Philip Kotler was born on May 27, 1931, in Chicago, Illinois. He received his master’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1953 and his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1956. He also obtained a post-doctorate from Harvard University in mathematics and a post-doctorate in behavioral science in mathematics. University of Chicago. In 1962 he began his career as a university professor at the Kellogg School of Management and in 1967 he published what is now considered the Marketing bible: the book Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning and Control, which is used in different countries. Since 1988 he has been the holder of the International Marketing degree at Northwestern University, one of the most important centers of business studies in the world. Throughout his career he has received numerous accolades, including the Paul Converse Award in 1978 and the Irwin-McGraw-Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator Award in 1995, both from the American Marketing Association (AMA).
Without a doubt there is much to learn from a person with such a background. On the Business and Company website I found 10 of his famous phrases: 1. “Every business is a service business: your company is not a chemical products company, it is a chemical products service business.” 2. “The best advertising is what satisfied customers do.” 3. “Needs become wants when they are directed to specific objects that could satisfy them.” 4. “Today you have to run faster to stay in the same place.” 5. “As the pace of change accelerates, companies can no longer rely on their old business practices to maintain prosperity.” 6. “The future is not yet to come. It has already arrived.” 7. “The successful salesperson cares first about the customer, then about the products.” 8. “The best way to retain customers is to think all the time about how to give them more for less.” 9. “Marketing cannot be the equivalent of selling because it starts long before the company has a product.” 10. “Who should ultimately design the product? The customer, of course.”
Many years ago I found out that Philip Kotler would give a conference in Costa Rica and without much thought I went to see him and, with everything and how heavy it is because it has 711 pages, I took my “syllabary” so that he could autograph it for me, too. I took a photo with him. I keep these memories as an important part of my wonderful 40 years in the Marketing world.
Happy 90’s, professor, you don’t know who I am, but I do know who you are.
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