How to market Noynoy Aquino for President in 2010

MarketingRx for October 2-09

Marketing "Noynoy for President"? - part 1

By Dr Ned Roberto & Ardy Roberto

Q:  We work for an NGO advocating for change and for Noynoy in the coming 2010 election.  We read your column some 2 or 3 months ago saying that voters have a low involvement regard for the coming election and this is why the top 5 or 6 presidentiables have very close voting percentages.  To be frank, we disagreed and still do with your analysis and didn’t like at all what you predicted.  We were like the group who asked you the question in that column.  But we are different in that we believe many of the concepts about changing public behavior we found in your social marketing book. 

You wrote that column before the Noynoy phenomenon.  But now without the kind of Villar’s extra heavy ad campaign and without the other candidates’ shameless advertorial plugs, we’ve all seen how out of nowhere Noynoy grabbed the lead in the presidential race with an unbelievable 49% votes.  Surely, you can no longer say voters still have a low involvement regard for the coming election.  So what does your social marketing have to say now about our voters, our presidentiables that include Noynoy, and who will win in the coming election?

A:  You wrote an excellent brief note.  Thank you for your endorsement of the senior MR-er’s social marketing book.  Next, we’d like to go directly and respond to your questions. 

First, do voters no longer have a low involvement regard for the coming election? 

There are at least two important things to consider here.  The first of these is Noynoy’s 49% share of votes.  We probably can say that for those 49%, the low involvement attitude has been left probably in favor of the high at least for the present.  But as you probably still remember from your statistics, the flip side of that 49%  is the 51% who were not touched by Noynoy or by what happened to his Mom, Cory Aquino.  So the most we can say about the 49% statistic is that the playing field is now probably even between the low versus the high involvement voters.

This conclusion holds IF the 49% ratio represents a trend data.  But it is not a trend data.  It’s a single data point as of the date of that scientific and credible survey that did the reading.  To validly conclude about its voter behavior implication with regard to the likelihood of Noynoy’s winning the coming election, we need to see at least two more successive data points.  If that 49% is more or less maintained in the next two surveys, then it becomes reasonable to conclude that there’s a trend in favor of half the voter population sticking to Noynoy.  If, on the other hand, the next two surveys show an increase for each of these 2 surveys, then the trend is for the 49% to even increase further.  That will make Noynoy a stronger presidential candidate on the verge of becoming a dominant leading candidate.  Finally, if in the next 2 surveys, the 49% declines, then that 49% was no trend.  It was an “outlier” statistics representing a “surprise” or what author Nassim Taleb refers to as a “Black Swan” phenomenon that would, just as quickly as it appeared would just disappear or level off about the norm.

In all these 3 likelihoods, what’s of strategic significance is to understand the social force or forces underlying that 49%.  What made 49% of voters to suddenly want Noynoy for their president this coming election?  Without such an explanation, anyone’s intrepretation and recommendation are just as good as any other.         

That’s one social marketing answer to your question on who will win the coming election.  If we transform the question to relate specifically to Noynoy, we therefore ask: 

“Will Noynoy win the election?”  

Or translating the question to refer to your advocacy stand and resoluteness, the question becomes: “What will it take for Noynoy to win the election?”

The ideal would be for Noynoy to hold on to the 49% and if there should be a decline in this voting ratio, to arrest the decline to the lowest level of 30% or 34%.   Recall that Fidel Ramos won at a 24% share of votes.  That’s our benchline in this portion of the analysis.  Now, come May 2010, the final share of votes for any candidate will be determined first by the voters’ final voting decision and behavior.  But the other half in a candidate’s final share of votes is his or his party’s political machinery.  That other big factor is what we do not and cannot have from the survey. 

The political machinery includes, especially for the incumbent party, its capability and experience with a “hello-Garci” maneuver or many others of this type of vote hijacking.  Presumably, a 10% lead (i.e., 34% versus 24%) would represent too numerous a number of voters to hide under a “dagdag-bawas” (vote adding-vote deducting) manipulation.  So Noynoy can gain a decisive win with a low 34% or a high 49% SOV that he now commands.

Just how can your NGO and allies make this happen? Since we are out of space, we'll answer that question next Friday! 

Thanks for your questions. Keep sending them to drnedmarketingrx@gmail.com or marketingrx@pldtdsl.net or text us at 0918-3386412. God bless! 

MarketingRx for October 9-09

Marketing "Noynoy for President"? - conclusion

By Dr Ned Roberto & Ardy Roberto

Here's a repeat of the question posed last week by an NGO advocating for change and "marketing" Noynoy for President in 2010. They ask:

Q:  We read your column some 2 or 3 months ago saying that voters have a low involvement regard for the coming election and this is why the top 5 or 6 presidentiables have very close voting percentages.  To be frank, we disagreed and still do with your analysis and didn’t like at all what you predicted....

(But) you wrote that column before the Noynoy phenomenon.  But now without the kind of Villar’s extra heavy ad campaign and without the other candidates’ shameless advertorial plugs, we’ve all seen how out of nowhere Noynoy grabbed the lead in the presidential race with an unbelievable 49% votes.  Surely, you can no longer say voters still have a low involvement regard for the coming election.  So what does your social marketing have to say now about our voters, our presidentiables that include Noynoy, and who will win in the coming election?

Here's the continuation and conclusion to our answer from last Friday. (For those who missed it, visit our blog at marketingrx.org)

Word of Mouth and stickiness

First, find out the social force or forces underlying Noynoy's 49% share of votes (SOV).  That reason or reasons make up the raw materials for crafting Noynoy’s campaign message.  Then, that message has to be spread and, more importantly, kept at top-of-mind  consciousness among the voter population.  How to effectively accomplish this is found today in the growing word-of-mouth (WoM) marketing literature.

WoM marketing shows that the spread of a message can be multiplied by its “conversation value.”   That’s the quality of a message that makes it to its audience “buzzable” or, if you will, “Boy-Abunda-ble.”  Its initial recipients will like to talk to others about the message. 

If talking about your message takes only one or two rounds, its spread and top-of-mind character will be short-lived.  It needs another pass-on quality.  That’s the quality of “stickiness” according to Malcolm Gladwell in his best seller book, The Tipping Point.  Message stickiness, comes from the appropriate and timely use of message source and message context. 

When a message source is a celebrity or a respected figure of authority, the message source gives the message an enhanced stickiness.  It is stickiness that gets the message to be passed on more than 2 or more rounds. 

The powerful message context, according to Gladwell, is controversy.  But using controversy is a double-edged sword because it has positive as well as negative consequences.

Controversy

Conversation value and stickiness find its ultimate and ingenious application in Mel Gibson’s pre-selling of the movie, “The Passion of the Christ.”  Gibson did the following.  First, he spread the news that the Jewish communities were “mad at me because they said the movie made them look bad; it’s anti-semitic, they said.”  He then got emails to circulate in the Christian communities defending the movie.  Next, he somehow was able to get Entertainment Weekly to name the movie “the most controversial film of all times.”  This was followed by a movie review from the foremost movie critic Robert Ebert saying: “The full 10 minutes of flogging makes this the most violent film I have ever seen. … No level-minded parent should ever allow children to see this movie.”  That practically assured an eager children’s crowd for the movie.  Through all of these, the movie-going public talked about the movie and the media continued to do so as well.

So how did Gibson sustain the conversation value and stickiness of his WoM campaign for his movie?  He created a serial WoM “campaign” of sorts whose changing but unrelenting conversation value and stickiness held movie fans in suspended anticipation until the movie’s release and they all lined up to see it.  That’s the kind of WoM campaign that Noynoy requires for keeping his 49% SOV or for making sure its decline would stop at 34%.  His campaign message must have conversation value and stickness.  Then that message must be reformulated repeatedly and played in a serial schedule until election time.

We close by saying something about the social marketing model we applied above for shaping and directing voter behavior.  Among other things, the model versatility.  It can work for any other presidentiables.  An appropriate WoM campaign can be developed for the #2, #3 or even the #4 candidate aimed at matching and then excelling Noynoy’s SOV.  It’s a matter of having the necessary voter response and behavior data.  

Thanks for your questions. Keep sending them to drnedmarketingrx@gmail.com or marketingrx@pldtdsl.net or text us at 0918-3386412. God bless! Our writer's fees for this and last week goes to Operation Blessing's medical mission for Typhoon Ondoy victims. Please support relief efforts for the victims of Typhoon Ondoy. God bless!  God bless!

the missing link - part 2 of Are Loyal Customers Really Profitable

Thanks to Tara who called my attention about the missing part 2 of our column. Here it is. Click on the link and it will take you to Inquirer.net

Are loyal customers really profitable?

The debate rages on

After declaring to our readers the past two weeks that "Loyal customers are not your most profitable customers" we have received quite 

a typhoon of responses to our "contrarian" statement. 

Some were in disbelief (thank you to one reader, Paolo, who sent a terrific argument) while some came out of the closet to declare that it does cost too much to maintain "loyal customers". A few were clarifying or asking for clarification. Even one of the authors of the book, Loyalty Myths, Tim Keiningham wrote to us (we asked permission from him to reprint his letter and article on customer loyalty myths as well, which we hope to publish.)

We don't have space to publish all the responses that we received, but we will start with one from Dickie Soriano, from BCD Pinpoint. Disclosure:   Dickie is a friend, no, actually a very loyal friend. But he does have the credentials and not just the relationship with us--that's why we're printing his letter first. (Dickie is in the customer loyalty game as a business. His agency is into CRM -- Customer Relationship Management--and is one of the pioneers and largest in Asia.)

So here's Dickie's response to our invitation in our last column to share your thoughts on the issue.

Hi Dr Ned and Ardy

I read your column here in Vietnam and since I had some time I
decided to respond to your challenge of getting your readers to
contribute to the discussion.

Being a fan of your column, and having been a guest in several of your
events, I am relieved to have read  the question: 

Are loyal customers really profitable? 

I say ‘relieved’ because there is an unfortunate
tendency amongst some  entrepreneurs and businesses  to simplify the
business of customer loyalty, reduce it to a program that offers
discounts to everyone, and then proclaim that, voila’ they have a
customer loyalty program just like everyone else.

There is, I believe, an unfortunate tendency amongst us to apply only
the most visible remedies to a problem, regardless of their actual
effects. Just look at the number of  signs  telling us to be ‘careful
when driving because accidents take place here’  or the irritating
tendency to put humps on roads – when the real problem to solve is
that no one bothers to enforce – or even teach – driving discipline.

What is customer loyalty really?

So let’s start with some definitions: loyalty is the act of someone
sticking by you, regardless of your actual traits or behaviour. It is
probably when you are at your most abrasive – when most people will
talk badly of you and shun you – that you find out who amongst your
friends are truly loyal, and who were just there for the ride. I would
argue that in the same manner, when your brand is at its lowest point
– perhaps because one of your products had a defect, or a new
competitor came in with a much better value proposition – that you
find out just how important loyal customers are.

If you attracted ‘loyal’ customers through a run-of-the-mill discount
program, are you truly developing loyalty to the brand? Or are you
encouraging deal shopping? (My wife, practical person that she is, has
a wallet full of ‘loyalty  cards’ that grant her all manner of points
and discounts – an irony that never ceases to escape my attention,
given that I am in the business of helping clients develop loyalty to
their brands).

Some customers are worth losing...

So the answer to the question – are loyal customers really profitable?
– will have to depend on context and definition. If  by loyal
customers you simply mean card-carrying people in a database, earning
points and discounts, I would argue that a number of them may not be
profitable.  Some may, in fact, be worth losing as they cost you too
much – the most obvious example of this was when customers would
badger either Globe or Smart for a new phone, even if their phone
bills were not commensurate to such a privilege.

At the end of the day...
Or here’s a more recent example. I am writing to you from Ho Chi Minh,
and yesterday I was witness to what I consider a great customer
loyalty program. I was brought around the city by the brand manager of
Vietnam’s largest paint company. We stopped by one housing
development, and she showed me how their field agents would go around
looking for houses that were being built, befriend the home owner and
the contractor, get data on the estimated square meters of surface
area that would have to be painted, and enter the data into a
web-based database. So far, those would be today’s textbook
approaches.

What blew me away was when the home-owner commended one of the field
agents, who, she said, even went to the extent of driving for her, and
running errands for her. All in the name of selling her paint! Now,
there is no doubt in my mind that this home-owner is now a loyal
customer – but it will likely be at least 4 years before she will be
in a frame of mind to re-paint her home. What was the cost of
engendering her loyalty, against the revenue the paint company would
generate from her?

The best way to find out if loyal customers are profitable, is,
unfortunately, the hardest way.   Fortunately, it is also the best way

to make your company profitable: force the discipline of critical
thought on the organization. Go beyond applying obvious remedies of
discount cards, and develop a truly brand-true, strategic program
aimed not just at developing customer loyalty, but of developing
profitable customer relationships 

- Dickie Soriano, Founder, BCD Pinpoint, BCDPinpoint.com

Thanks for sharing this with us Dickie! 

Keep your questions and comments coming.  Send them to us at MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net ordrnedmarketingrx@gmail.com text us at 0918-3386412. God bless!

Are loyal customers really profitable?

Click the title to read one of the most controversial columns that we've had so far...

Best of MarketingRx for Brand Execs now out!

Fresh from the publishing oven is our second in a series of MarketingRx book compilations of your favorite columns. This one was specially compiled for marketing and brand executives. Thanks to Anvil Publishing and PDI. It should be available at National and Powerbooks by next week or so.

FFF’s student dilemma: “What should I do about my (outdated) marketing professors without offending them …?”

MarketingRx for Jan 23-08
By Dr Ned Roberto with Ardy Roberto


We continue to answer the questions and try to allay the fears of student we’ve named FFF (Frustrated and Fearful of the Future).

To recap, here’s part of his letter (for the benefit of those who missed this three weeks ago.)

Dear MarketingRx:

Graduation is fast approaching and I canʼt help but feel insecure of my knowledge and skills. Although I study in a reputable university, I am unfortunate to have outdated teachers whom despite having doctorate degrees stick strictly by the books. They lack in 1st hand experience which I think is highly instructive and crucial for their students.

Our typical classroom discussions range from reading out loud the latest copy of Kotler to embarrassing situations like when they are bombarded with questions they cannot answer convincingly. Another thing I find ironic is that they cannot relate what they teach to a Philippine setting. If not for your column, I would never have heard of marketing gurus such as Kumar or the concepts of customer insighting, communitization nor debunking the age-old belief that customer loyalty is the best business model.

Coming across marketing alumni, they have all expressed the same frustration: what we learn in school does not coincide with what is expected by the employers. This discrepancy highly alarms a lot of the marketing students. We have long expressed our observation that our curriculum needs to be streamlined with what is actually happening out there but it seems that these sentiments fall on deaf ears.

My grades are quite good and they have earned me a spot to be part of a team our department sends to compete in such competitions such as PANAʼs IMC and PMAʼs STRATMark. During these times, my team mates and I take it upon ourselves to learn the whole process and figure everything out on our own since our professors are not very helpful. We try to make the best of what is available but we still feel that it is inadequate. In fact as much as possible I try to attend seminars with key speakers and read up on marketing articles and books, but having no one to direct my questions to, I often get confused. I am now scared that in the future when I am employed I will find myself in situations where I am clueless.
In closing here are some of my questions:
what am I to do about my situation without offending my professors?
could you please give me an idea of how it is to be a professional marketer and what the industry is like?
what reading materials could you suggest to a newbie like me which could be very helpful?
what else should I do that could supplement my education and make my resume more attractive?

~ FFF (Frustrated and Fearful of the Future)


A:

Last week, the junior MRx-er answered questions #3-4, now here’s your answer to question #1.

As your senior MRx-er, and having been a marketing professor for the past 30 years, I have witnessed and continue to see the kind of professors you reasonably find unacceptable. So I start by saying that it’s easy for me to empathize with your situation. Even after three decades in marketing education, I still find myself infuriated by the presence of these professors among us. But over the years, my regard for them has changed and there’s a difference in the way I regard them now. Today, I try to look at things also from their end.

That perspective came out of my co-authoring the 1989 social marketing book. Here’s what I learned from that project and they are lessons directly related to how I will answer your question.

Take the next step after complaining
First, if you look at marketing as a study of market and customer behavior, it’s easy to go from that step into saying that marketing is all about changing “undesirable” public behavior on the part of your target market or customer segment. That’s one way of looking at your situation. Ultimately, you want to change your marketing professors’ undesirable behavior, a behavior you find unbecoming of a responsible committed teacher. When we say “you,” we mean you the student as taking on the role of the change agent. At some point, you have to put a stop to complaining. For the period you’ve complained, that has served its purpose. It was good to complain because it let off the justifiable steam of unfairness inside you. But you know that the solution to your problem cannot be found in complaining. Continuing it can only add to your sense frustration and to no avail.

Launch a change campaign
So ending your frustration is in your hands. Instead, do something. Develop and launch a behavioral change campaign.

And your marketing professors are going to be your target market segment. But who’s going to be the primary target market (PTM) segment? Say, you have five guilty marketing professors who you can rank according to predisposition to behavior change like so:
1 = very resistant to change
2 = more resistant than predisposed
3 = neither resistant nor predisposed
4 = more predisposed than resistant
5 = very predisposed

So who should you target first? You can choose according to two opposing logics. One line of thinking says: “Choose the segment with the most need for change.” That would naturally be the one that’s “very resistant to change.” The other line of thinking says: “Choose the segment that’s most ready and therefore the easiest and probably the quickest to change.” That segment would be the “very predisposed.”

The most resistant will take time, maybe a very long time to change. It’s a segment that will therefore require the most investment in time and attention. On the other hand, the most predisposed will be quick to change and you can therefore use its conversion for leveraging on persuading the other segments to change as well. In your situation as a graduating student, this is the primary segment to go after. It’s a primary target market segment of one professor.

Positioning
After segmenting and after targeting comes the most pivotal step of “positioning.” Here, what does positioning mean? Positioning means persuading your primary target professor that it is to his personal and professorial advantage to leave his “bad” teaching behavior and replace it with the “good.” What’s in it for him to change behavior when he’s obviously satisfying some personal “needs” with what he’s doing now. Are the benefits from the behavior change going to be superior to what he’s enjoying now?

That in essence is the positioning diagnosis you have to undertake if you are to succeed in this behavior change mission that you have committed to pursue. Let’s see if we can help you push forward on this commitment.

The very first thing to do at this point is to understand why your target professor is teaching the way he does. Consumer behavior research says that a consumer, that is, your professor, does things because he’s satisfying some personal need or needs with his current teaching behavior. In other words, he won’t be doing what he’s doing if he’s not getting something out of it. So you should find out this. After finding out, your persuasion task becomes this. Convince him that the benefits from the new and changed behavior stand above and are superior to the benefits he’s getting from his current teaching behavior.

Consumer psychologists also tell us that people do things by “modeling” or according to the “social proof principle.” Since all other marketing professors are behaving this way, then everyone comes to view the behavior as correct or at least as not wrong. So search for the model that can reverse the social proof process.

There’s a third avenue of understanding. This is what consumer behaviorists call “perceived social normative pressure to change behavior.” In other words, if your target professor’s superiors, peers, student association, student alumni and other school stakeholders take a concerted effort to raise the bar of teaching performance, then there’s more likelihood of a behavior change. Of course, we have noted in your letter that you’ve already explored this avenue and you mentioned that it did not trigger that “social normative pressure to change behavior.” But it’s still worth reviewing that effort to see how it can stand fine tuning and sharpening.

“Teaching the teachers”
A fourth behavior change tactic worth mentioning is “empowerment.” In the situation you’re in, that translates to no less than teaching your target professor how to change behavior. The assumption that may seem unreasonable at first glance is that your target professor wants to change but just doesn’t know how to change. There’s no issue here about motivation to change behavior. The question is much more mundane and practical. It’s a matter of knowing the technique, the skill for changing behavior. We’re saying that our target professor wants to change but he just does not have the step-by-step knowhow to effect the change in behavior. Many of us would immediately say: “How can that be true with professors? These are intelligent professors with Ph.Ds after their names.” If you just stop and reflect for a moment, you may come to realize that teachers learn the content, the “what” of their disciplines. Practicing the what, that is, the “how” is often not encompasses in that training and even when it is, whatever learning happens is still all up in the air. Most teachers especially those who are young find it hard to practice what they preach.

Question: Which of these behavior change strategies do you adopt for your target professor?

A social marketer would say try all that’s good in each of them. Be eclectic. I’m conscious that my own “purist” behavioral science colleagues and friends would be ready to pounce of that prescription and call it “opportunistic” because being eclectic is to them the euphemism for being opportunistically Machiavellian. But my own experience with eclecticism over the years has been responsible for consequentially raising the likelihood of success and minimizing the risk of failure of almost all my consulting projects. It is in that spirit of sharing this experience that I write the prescription.


A final word. In my seminars, I am often asked by some well-meaning young marketing managers what they should do with their own bosses who behave just like FFF’s marketing professors. They find their bosses outdated in their command of marketing. If they have become just like FFF’s marketing professors, then our diagnosis and prescription should in their basic content and structure apply.

We’ll end with this advice from a reader named Carlo to be “patient.”

“Over the years, the basics of marketing haven't changed much. That's
what you need to learn in school. The Theory. What you need to learn
from your professors is how they were able to cope with the problems
of their times. Your professors may not be able to cope with current
marketing situations now if they have not updated themselves,
especially if they are not IT savvy and have not considered the new
forms marketing that are evolving such as targeted online marketing,
the social networks and other digital marketing phenomenon.

Nevertheless, you are expected to use your professor's experience and
draw an analogy on how to use this to your era. That's where your
creativity comes in handy as a marketing professional. Don't rush.
You'll get there. Unfortunately, they can not teach 'experience' in
school. Carlo - COBOL.RADIUS@GMAIL.COM

More advice and replies to FFF (Frustrated and Fearful of the Future) continue to come in. We’ll close this series next week with advice from MarketingRx and other readers on FFF’s question on Working in the Marketing Industry and Expectations.

Keep your questions and commentscoming. Send them to us at MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net or post them on www.marketingrx.org or text us at 0919-314-5412. God bless!

Advice for Frustrated and Fearful of the Future (FFF)

MarketingRx for Friday – January 16-08

Last week, in "Should this graduating marketing student fear for his future?" MarketingRx published the letter of a graduating marketing student who, feeling that his four year education will be inadequate for a marketing career, fears for his future.

The same perhaps goes for those who are currently in marketing having been transferred from a different field. We see that all the time. Those in HR, Sales, IT—and even nursing, the arts and engineering are now assigned to a management position (or are running a business) that requires a working knowledge of Marketing.

As for me (the Jr MRx-er), I had no plans to get into Marketing. My initial career path was either law or journalism. Out of college, I started writing about business, entrepreneurship, and health for a monthly lifestyle magazine. Later, I found myself in a management position for the publisher of an international business magazine that tasked me to market books to Asian managers (a new spin-off business of the publisher). I had to learn fast, since the previous manager I had replaced was gone and there was no turnover or formal training. The publisher had faith in me—or rather the fact that I was the son of the Senior MRx-er, THE professor of International Marketing at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM).

I remember doing several things to help me prepare for the position and the responsibility. These three daily "To Dos" also helped me when I started our business.

1. Seek mentors. I picked the brain of the best available resource person on marketing that was available to me—my Dad! The Sr MRxer and I carpooled to work every day. The commute from Paranaque (south of Manila) to our respective offices in Makati became my "University of South Super Highway" with Dr Ned Roberto as my professor. Thankfully, our offices were located within 5 minutes of each other. Since there was no Skyway then, that was about 3 hours of marketing lessons with a teacher to student ratio of 1:1.

First hand, I'd learn about my Dad's clients and the different challenges that they asked the Sr MRxer to help them out with.You may not have the blessing of having a marketing guru as your father, but you can certainly seek out marketing mentors either in the company you work for or as you mentioned, in the various marketing associations and clubs that you have already joined. I also considered my boss, Ashok Nath, the publisher and president of the publishing firm that I worked at, as one of my marketing mentors as well. He was an encouraging influence who allowed his managers to be entrepreneurial. Mr Nath also introduced me to battle scarred marketing veterans who generously shared their expertise.

While you're still in school, offer to be the research assistant of marketing authors and consultants like PMA Agora Awardees, Willie Arcilla and Karen de Asis.

2. Read. The best marketing mentors can be consulted for a few hundred or thousand pesos 24/7 through the books and articles that they have written. Since I marketed books, I had access to the best and latest business books published by Harvard Business Press, McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster, John Wiley, etc. Publishers would send me free review copies. Those days are over, but I still invest and budget a princely amount for books every year. I learned much from the classic career autobiographies of advertising legends, Lester Wunderman and David Ogilvy.

When I started my business on a shoe-string budget, I consulted Guerrilla Marketing founder, Jay Levinson through his Guerrilla Marketing series of books starting with "Guerrilla Marketing for the Home-Based Business" co-authored with Seth Godin. (Little did I know that a decade later, I would be hosting Jay Levinson in Manila.) Another book that I used to refer to a lot when I became an entrepreneur was Josiah Go's "The Marketing Plan" book.

Right now, I'm going through "Lovemarks – the future beyond brands" by the Worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, Kevin Roberts. It's an inspiring, enjoyable read (brilliantly designed also) that details what and how he's knows what he knows in brand marketing since his start in P&G in 1972 and then through his many international corporate posts until his current position in the global office of advertising giant, Saatchi.

3. Go back to "school." Yes, I know that you've just graduated and are probably glad to be out of school. But you need to go back and continually upgrade your knowledge. A management consultant once told me that the knowledge of a graduating IT student becomes obsolete in about 3-6 months after they graduate. Given that the graduating marketing student's knowledge may have more shelf life, you still have to keep on upgrading and updating by attending "school." So attend cutting edge seminars and conferences where the latest ideas and case studies in business and marketing are presented.

Create your own curriculum. Allow me a shameless plug right here: include the Dr. Ned marketing workshops being offered through Josiah Go's Mansmith & Fielders in your "marketing school calendar."

Lastly, don't be quick to dismiss what you've learned at school—at least you've been exposed to the basics and have a good foundation. What's more important, I think, is that you've learned the discipline of hard work (assuming that you are studying and working hard) while still a student.

Once you get into a corporate marketing position fresh from college, the boss wouldn't be careless and throw the weight of running a marketing campaign to a new hire. There will be a process of company inculturation ("this is how things are done here"), orientation, training and mentoring. For some it will be faster rather than slower. You'll have to learn fast on the job. The discipline of hard work that you hopefully learned in school will be your best friend. Hopefully, you also learned how to work with different people and picked up people and leadership skills with all the group projects that were assigned to you in school.

In business and the corporate world, you won't go far if you prefer to work alone. You'll have to learn how to work with different people.

We'll end with a reply from one of our readers who responded to last week's invitation to send their two centavos worth of advice to the FFF student.

"Marketing is one of the most challenging jobs out there - precisely because it is very hard to define. Marketing usually does so many things all at the same time that it really is hard to create a textbook teaching Marketing to students. …What's important is not what's in the textbooks but rather what have you really learned while in school like how to network with other students, how to build an organization, how to learn the importance of teamwork in sports activities, how to court a girl, and how to influence others - this is what's more important and this is what every student can use when they join the corporate world."
- Jay Jaboneta, Customer Business Development, P&G Distributing Philippines

So, FFF, we hope we've answered at least 1 or 2 of the four questions that you asked last week ("what reading materials could you suggest to a newbie like me which could be very helpful?" and "what else should I do that could supplement my education?")

Next week, the Senior MRxer will answer the other two questions raised by FFF ("what am I to do about my situation without offending my professors?" and "could you please give me an idea of how it is to be a professional marketer and what the industry is like?"

To our other readers who replied, thanks for sending your advice to FFF. We'll forward them directly to him. We're sure he'll appreciate it. Keep your questions and comments coming. Text us at 0918-3386412. Or send them to us at MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net or post them at www.marketingrx.org . God bless!

Should this graduating marketing student fear for his future?

MarketingRx for January 9, 2009

Dear Marketing RX,

Hope you could help me out. Iʼm a 4th year student taking up Marketing Management. I have stumbled across your column a few months back and I was really pleased that it was helpful and clarified some questions that I had. So I took a chance and decided to ask for your expert advice on my problem.

Graduation is fast approaching and I canʼt help but feel insecure of my knowledge and skills. Although I study in a reputable university, I am unfortunate to have outdated teachers whom despite having doctorate degrees stick strictly by the books.

They lack in 1st hand experience which I think is highly instructive and crucial for their students. Our typical classroom discussions range from reading out loud the latest copy of Kotler to embarrassing situations like when they are bombarded with questions they cannot answer convincingly. Another thing I find ironic is that they cannot relate what they teach to a Philippine setting. If not for your column, I would never have heard of marketing gurus such as Kumar or the concepts of customer insighting, communitization nor debunking the age-old belief that customer loyalty is the best business model.

Coming across marketing alumni, they have all expressed the same frustration: what we learn in school does not coincide with what is expected by the employers. This discrepancy highly alarms a lot of the marketing students. We have long expressed our observation that our curriculum needs to be streamlined with what is actually happening out there but it seems that these sentiments fall on deaf ears.

My grades are quite good and they have earned me a spot to be part of a team our department sends to compete in such competitions such as PANAʼs IMC and PMAʼs STRATMark. During these times, my team mates and I take it upon ourselves to learn the whole process and figure everything out on our own since our professors are not very helpful. We try to make the best of what is available but we still feel that it is inadequate. In fact as much as possible I try to attend seminars with key speakers and read up on marketing articles and books, but having no one to direct my questions to, I often get confused.

I am now scared that in the future when I am employed I will find myself in situations where I am clueless.

In closing here are some of my questions: ·
what am I to do about my situation without offending my professors?·
could you please give me an idea of how it is to be a professional marketer and what the industry is like?·
what reading materials could you suggest to a newbie like me which could be very helpful?· what else should I do that could supplement my education and make my resume more attractive?

Thank you and I hope that you could help me by answering through your column because I feel that there is a lot of potential among us and if given a chance we could become good marketers. Sincerely, Frustrated and Fearful of the Future (FFF)

+++Next week, we'll start addressing FFF's concerns and questions one by one. But what do you, our dear readers, think? Send us your suggestions for FFF and we'll include it in our column. If you're a marketing student please write to us and share your experience. We're sure that there are professors and schools out there that are exceptions to this future marketer's lament.Send them to us at MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net or post them at www.marketingrx.org .

We can also receive your reactions via text at 0918-3386412. (Pls include your name and co./organization/school.) Our prayers and thoughts are with our editor, Margie Quimpo-Espino who suffered a stroke while on a business trip to India last month. She's still recovering from a hospital in India and everyone who's read this column is encouraged to say a little prayer for her swift recovery. Thanks and God bless!===============