The Marketing Journal
  • About
  • Interviews
  • Articles
  • Videos
  • Book Reviews
  • Views
  • Subscribe
“The Road Ahead: Marketing’s Biggest Challenges” – An Interview with Bernie Jaworski (Part 2)

“The Road Ahead: Marketing’s Biggest Challenges” – An Interview with Bernie Jaworski (Part 2)

October 28, 2016

Bernie Jaworski is the Drucker Chair in Management and the Liberal Arts, which is named in honor of Peter Drucker, the founder of modern management and the namesake of the Drucker School. The professorship is awarded to an internationally recognized scholar who carries on the Drucker legacy of tempering sound business practices with a commitment to social responsibility.  Jaworski’s interests span a wide range of disciplines and industries. We asked him to talk about the biggest challenges facing marketing today. This is the first part of a two-part interview series.  This is Part 2 of a two-part interview series. See Part 1 >>

Thanks for this second meeting, Bernie.  We were about to get to the 5th challenge for marketers – competing globally.  What are your thoughts? How does global competition raise the bar for marketers?
It raises the bar for everyone. The word “global” has such cachet these days, but the issue is quite complicated – and touches everything, from marketing to strategy.  Let’s look at the way we commonly view global competition these days – that is how does a Nestle thrive in an emerging market? Of course, every country is different. China and India have their own set of challenges.  A country like Vietnam or Burma requires a totally different lens.  What skills do global marketers have to have to understand the local needs in local markets?  What is the threshold for experimentation, for learning? How do regional and global management cultures work together?

And then there’s the reverse – how does a Vietnamese company, for example, go after the US market?  What do emerging enterprises need to compete globally?

The more challenging way to frame this issue is to ask, “in a flat world, where technology can be leap-frogged, how do firms develop competitive advantage in a way that lets them move forward?”  Global dynamics affect everyone everywhere, no matter the size of the business – whether it’s GE or the local BBQ shop down the street.

The BBQ joint on the corner?
Sure, the supply chain, the spices, the machinery – all impacted by globalization; there’s even competition from the “smoked meats” available at Costco.

So even local businesses are vulnerable and must pay attention.

What about globalization and the impact on NGOs and institutions?
That’s more complex. So how does the World Bank compete withe the Chinese Development Bank?  How do NGOs execute across different countries while staying true to their mission?  How do they work with the private sector?  With different political systems?

How do they manage competition between ecosystems? The marketers job becomes far more difficult now.

Peter Drucker said that business performance comes first – it is the aim of the enterprise and the reason for its existence. But he also says that if there is no functioning enterprise, there will be no business performance.  For Drucker the same held true if the worker and work are mismanaged.  For Drucker there are three major jobs of management: managing a business, managing managers, and managing work and worker. How does that play out globally?  The global marketing executive has those three jobs across the world.

Drucker was both a visionary and a prophet when he said:

Economic performance that is being achieved by mismanaging managers is illusory and actually destructive of capital. Economic performance that is being achieved by mismanaging work and worker is equally an illusion. It will not only raise costs to the point where the enterprise ceases to be competitive; it will, by creating class hatred and class warfare, end by making it impossible for the enterprise to operate at all.

Another challenge: how do you balance radical innovation with incremental innovation?
screen-shot-2016-10-28-at-4-45-40-pmI’m going to preach Peter Drucker again, because it goes back to what he said in The Practice of Management in 1954. Managers have to manage in two time periods: the future and the present.

Drucker would say that managers should spend 15-20% of their time thinking and working on the future. How does a marketing executive do that?  Not in most companies.  Short-term pressure drives everything.  The result is that the future is an after-thought.  We spend perhaps 1% of our time on it.  Occasionally, a manager may look up and realize that if we don’t change this now, in 5 years, we will miss the boat. And then we put our heads down again.

But it can be done.  And it can be done rather simply.

How do you get rid of 20% of your work to focus on the future?
The way I advise executives is to make space for the future is by stopping something they are doing now.  Drucker called it abandonment.  What are we going to stop doing in order to focus on the future?
One way to do this is to hand over 20% of your tasks to peers or subordinates, or just stop doing them. At minimum, I guess that at least 10% of what we do doesn’t need to be done.  The time left over should be spent on new ideas, the breadwinners of tomorrow.  This is where radical innovation happens.

Finally, and not least, the  challenge of organic growth.  How do companies grow organically?
That’s a question at the top of every CEO agenda.

In his book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Robert Gordon argues that growth is over, that we’ve had our run. He does not share the view of the “techno-optimists” – that we are on the cusp of of another explosion of history-making growth.  I disagree with some of his insights, but there is no escaping the factors he cites as causing the decline in productivity: rising inequality, an inadequate education system, demographics, and debt.

The traditional marketing thinking says that if we pursue the right segmentation strategy, differentiate our products, and take care of the 4Ps, then growth happens.  Unfortunately, this is not the case. Nobody has a playbook, a methodology for growth.  Where’s the I-formation for growth?

The litmus test for every CEO is growth.  We know how to smooth out the supply side, but the demand side is still unpredictable.  The CMO must help the CEO with the challenge.

How do we grow our existing business?  How do we expand our existing business in new geographies?  And how do we introduce new products that grow the company?

That is the subject of the book Bob Lurie (EVP, Eastman Chemicals) and I are working on.  Stay tuned.

Thanks, Bernie.

INTERVIEW by Christian Sarkar

Related Posts

“Technology and the Common Good” – Christian Sarkar and Philip Kotler

B2B Marketing /

“Technology and the Common Good” – Christian Sarkar and Philip Kotler

“Wicked Problems” – An Interview with Philip Kotler and Christian Sarkar

B2C Marketing /

“Wicked Problems” – An Interview with Philip Kotler and Christian Sarkar

“Cultural Presence: The Social Function of Milan Design Week” – Barbara Dal Corso

Branding /

“Cultural Presence: The Social Function of Milan Design Week” – Barbara Dal Corso

‹ “Strategy Made Simple – The 3 Core Strategy Questions” by John Hagel › “Branding as a Job to be Done” – An Interview with Clayton Christensen
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Recent Posts

  • “Technology and the Common Good” – Christian Sarkar and Philip Kotler
  • “Cultural Presence: The Social Function of Milan Design Week” – Barbara Dal Corso
  • “Wicked Problems” – An Interview with Philip Kotler and Christian Sarkar
  • “Dragon proofing your legacy brand” – Grant McCracken
  • OP-ED: “Autopsy Of a Brand: Tesla” – George Tsakraklides
  • “The 5th P is Purpose” – Christian Sarkar and Philip Kotler
  • “The CEO-as-Brand Era: How Leadership Ego is Fueling Tesla’s Meltdown” – Ilenia Vidili
  • “The Future of Marketing is the Quest for Good” – Christian Sarkar and Philip Kotler
  • “Questions for the New Year” – John Hagel
  • “Enlightened Management – An Interview with Gabriele Carboni”
  • “If you’re not thinking segments, you’re not thinking” – Anthony Ulwick
  • “Does Marketing Need Curtailment for the Sake of Sustainability?” – Philip Kotler
  • ‘Social profit orientation’ can help companies and nonprofits alike do more good in the world by Leonard L. Berry, Lerzan Aksoy, and Tracey Danaher
  • “Understanding Hallyu: The Impact of Korean Pop Culture” by Sanya Anand and David Seyheon Baek
  • “Go-to-Market (GTM): A New Definition” – Karthi Ratnam
  • “Jobs-to-be-Done for Government” – Anthony Ulwick
  • “The Power of Superconsumers” – Christopher Lochhead, Eddie Yoon, & Katrina Kirsch
  • “Zoom Out/Zoom In – Making It Personal” – John Hagel
  • “Regeneration or Extinction?” – a discussion with Philip Kotler, Christian Sarkar, and Enrico Foglia
  • “Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap” – James Dyke, Robert Watson, and Wolfgang Knorr
  • “The allure of the ad-lib: New research identifies why people prefer spontaneity in entertainment” – Jacqueline Rifkin and Katherine Du
  • “What is ‘ethical AI’ and how can companies achieve it?” by Dennis Hirsch and Piers Norris Turner
  • “How the US military used magazines to target ‘vulnerable’ groups with recruiting ads” – Jeremiah Favara
  • “Ethics and AI: Policies for Governance and Regulation” – Aryssa Yoon, Christian Sarkar, and Philip Kotler
  • “Product Feature Prioritization —How to Align on the Right List” – Bob Pennisi
  • “The Community Value Pyramid” – Christian Sarkar, Philip Kotler, Enrico Foglia
  • “Next Practices in Museum Experience Design” – Barbara Dal Corso
  • “What does ESG mean?” – Luciana Echazú and Diego C. Nocetti
  • “ChatGPT could be a game-changer for marketers, but it won’t replace humans any time soon” – Omar H. Fares
  • “If Your Brand Comes Before Your Category, You’re Doing It Wrong” – Eddie Yoon, Nicolas Cole, Christopher Lochhead

Categories

  • Advertising
  • AI
  • Analytics
  • B2B Marketing
  • B2C Marketing
  • Big Data
  • Book Reviews
  • Brand Activism
  • Branding
  • Category Design
  • Community
  • Content Marketing
  • COVID-19
  • Creativity
  • Customer Culture
  • Customer Engagement
  • Customer Experience
  • Dark Marketing
  • Decision Making
  • Design
  • Digital Marketing
  • Ecosystems & Platforms
  • Ethics
  • Go to Market
  • Innovation
  • Internet of Things
  • Jobs-to-be-Done
  • Leadership
  • Manipulation
  • Marketing Technology
  • Markets & Segmentation
  • Meaning
  • Metrics & Outcomes
  • Millennials
  • Mobile Marketing
  • Non Profit Marketing
  • Organizational Alignment
  • Peace Marketing
  • Privacy
  • Product Marketing
  • Regeneration
  • Regenerative Marketing
  • Research
  • Retail
  • Risk & Reputation
  • Sales
  • Services Marketing
  • Social Media
  • Strategy & Business Models
  • Sustainability
  • Uncategorized
  • Videos

Archives

  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • September 2024
  • March 2024
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • October 2022
  • August 2022
  • May 2022
  • January 2022
  • November 2021
  • September 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016

Back to Top

© 2016-19 The Marketing Journal and the individual author(s). All Rights Reserved
Produced by: Double Loop Marketing LLC
By using this site, scrolling this page, clicking a link or continuing to browse otherwise, you agree to the use of cookies, our privacy policy, and our terms of use.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy