I saw Philip Kotler in Chennai!

Humour, Media & Entertainment, Miscellaneous

I had first heard about Kotler from an employee of HCL, an ex-alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad, who had said something to this effect: “…I wanted to join an FMCG marketing company a la Kotler… but something something… ended up joining HCL”.

This was as part of the multi-media pre-placement presentation for management school campuses that Supreet, Aarohi and I were making for HCL’s HR department. I remember, the three of us conferring and asking if any of us knew what she was saying. We were informed that Kotler was the bible of marketing.

This was 1997.

A year later I had my own freshly printed version of Kotler’s book on marketing management.

A much looked-forward-to book used in marketing management courses in the first year of management programmes across the globe, and then referred to several times over. One of my professors at IIM Indore, Anirban Ghosh, in fact said, “It’s one book, that should be unabashedly dog-eared, and the sooner you do it the better!”

And yesterday, I saw the guru of marketing in person, at a session organized by Great Lakes Management School, Chennai and Hindu Businessline. While I gather my notes and wits to summarize what he said, what’s my immediate take-back from the talk?

He writes much better than he talks. And while the former comes for a few hundred rupees, the latter costs several thousands!

 

Note:
My eagerness to share this with you, reminds me of an old incident where Aishwarya Rai danced in front of me for a couple of hours, while I sat smugly watching her every move.

So what if there were a few thousand more people sitting beside me in the stadium for that Bollywood show!

5 thoughts on “I saw Philip Kotler in Chennai!”

  1. “And while the former comes for a few hundred rupees, the latter costs several thousands!”
    – Loved this line. How true. Does it work out cheaper if you divide the amount he was given by the number of people who hearded him talk?

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  3. Jammy:
    on 1.)
    The economics of the event are a total win-win-win situation.
    The speaker gets his money (a few lakhs perhaps?). The organizers get theirs (with each invitation costing 15-20k and some 100 participants, assume 20 paying + sponsorships of course).
    Some amongst the audience come back and brag n blog about it :)

    on 2.)
    I have been debating… will find release soon.

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  4. When I studied Game Theory in my MBA & CA I never went by the introduction in the Particular chapter of Game Theory in the book and never saw that for this theory John Nash Received Nobel Prize with others.

    One day I received an email from a friend in USA conveying that they has watched the movie A Beautiful Mind starring Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly & others. I went with my wife to PVR-Saket in Delhi to watch the movie and was astonished to see how a person with split-personality had won the Nobel Prize. That day I learnt the full story about John Nash. Actually it is not that John Nash who received the Nobel Prize alone, but he received it with colleague Reinhard Selten and Hungarian-born János Harsányi for Game Thoery. “Game Theory” was initiated by Hungarian born John von Neumann and Austrian born Oskar Morgenstern in 1944.

    Time went on and one day I was at Bangalore and in the hotel I saw a man looked some Phirangi with a frail face and some one said do you know who is this John Nash; I was just thinking and thinking about Him, movie Beautiful Mind & Game Theory.

    Kuldeep Koul

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