Why marketers should read Peter Drucker?

I am reading an interesting HBR article titled Why Read Peter Drucker? in the recent HBR issue dedicated to him. I have been an admirer of Drucker’s works since reading his The Effective Executive in college. 

Drucker passed away on Nov 11, 2005 at a grand age of 95. He influenced numerous manager as Intel’s co-founder Andrew S. Grove added: “Like many philosophers, he spoke in plain language that resonated with ordinary managers. Consequently, simple statements from him have influenced untold numbers of daily actions; they did mine over decades.”

Although Drucker is known for his pithy aphorism, I completely agree with Kantrow’s conclusions on Druker’s (and Druckersims) influence on current management discipline. Kantrow notes that Drucker’s books should command attention of modern managers not just for their ideas (or stock of aphorisms), but “to profit from the discipline of mind by which they are formulated.” 

I especially think folks doing marketing (both marketers and non-marketers) will benefit from approaching marketing problems with an integrative problem solving toolkit.  When working on marketing problems,I think, it is worth asking what would Druker do to inspire one to take an integrative approach to problem solving.

Presenting like Steve Jobs

This morning, via GuyKawasaki’s tweet, I came across a cool review of Carmine Gallo’s recent book. Gallo provides 5 tips to on how to present like Steve Jobs. I had fun tweeting these 5 tips.

Here are the 5 steps to start being Steve Jobs:

1- Introduce the antagonist

Job’s always introduces a villain before Apple rides in to save the day. In the early days of Apple it was IBM and these days it is of course, Microsoft/Windows. Carmine’s suggests introducing a antagonists each time you are presenting. The villain may be a competitor, state of the industry etc

2- Create Twitter-friendly headlines

Job’s is superior at writing headlines for jounalists, says Carmine. He suggests all presentation should be summarized into less than 140 characters. Example, Job’s summed up his presentation on Appel’s Mac Air with a simple statement – World’s thinnest laptop !

3- Sell transformative experience (and not your product)

Job’s, according to Carmin, only sells dreams. I think that is very true, when Job’s first introduced iPod he did not talk about them as a better designed MP3 player. He talked about how the experience of listening to music would be transformed on the go.

4- Zen simplicity

Keep the presentation simple and visual. Keep it less Gates like !

5- Rehearse

This one is easy, but difficult to execute.

The video below is very good material about power point presentation.

A marketing link

In my view good marketing involves crafting compelling and contagious stories about products. Crafting such stories is an iterative process…these days stories are told using various mediums.
This story commissioned by the advertising agency Nordpol+ Hamburg uses origami models and computer animators to tell the story of the japanese sports brand ASICS.

Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.