Topic
1 belief on Marketing Fact and Fiction, written by Mahesh Murthy.
Marketing carries more folklore than most professions. The 4Ps. Loyalty programmes that manufacture loyalty. Funnels that describe nothing anyone has ever done. These frameworks survive because they are teachable, not because they are true.
The test we apply is unglamorous: does the idea predict anything? A framework that cannot tell you in advance which campaign will work, or explain afterwards why one did, is not knowledge. It is décor for slide decks. A surprising amount of what is taught as marketing fails this test.
These essays go through the folklore one piece at a time and check it against what the evidence and two decades of paid-on-results practice actually show.
We were brought up to believe in the Emperors of Marketing, only to realize over time that they often weren't wearing any clothes. Let's start with a homage to Philip Kotler, if only to point out all the places his work doesn't apply today.
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