Wine and Book Pairing: Marketing by Philip Kotler et al with a South African Pinotage

January 28, 2021
Marketing by Philip Kotler et al paired with a Fat Man South African Pinotage: Wine and Book Pairing

Marketing is one of the most important topics in an MBA because, let’s face it, without Marketing the Higher Education sector would not have been able to create the MBA industry. God bless it!

And the “go to” tome in this field is Marketing by Philip Kotler et al.

It’s quite a gift to take a fascinating, pulsating, and exhilerating topic as marketing and crush it down into something so bland, tasteless, and cardigan-wearing as the authors have done with this book.

To be fair, their goal was not to create a page turner (a little wink to my wonderful EA, Ms Paige Turner), it was to capture the intricate elements of marketing.

Likewise, there are some grape growers and winemakers in the world who can take the majestic grape and crush it down into something unappealing to most modern palates just like the South African wine industry has done with Pinotage.

For this Book and Wine Pairing, I have gone with Fat Man Pinotage but really, I could have chosen any.

The goal has been to completely remove anything that might distract you from this book because as you’re reading it, your mind will be scouring and scaling the walls to escape.

Of course, not everybody will have these reactions. We know that because we apply market segmentation, targeting, and positioning to all we do and clearly we are not the ideal customers for either of these items through free choice. We are all here because we need to be. One could regard this is a mindshare monopoly. Kotler et al on page 486 of the 7th Edition would be smiling at the thought that we are even covering this book due to “pure monopoly”.

With that in mind, my recommendation when reading Marketing is to open any South African Pinotage (I chose Fat Man) lest one choose a wine that might risk distracting you from the endurance test of the reading the book. Pinotage is often available from the school’s wine shop or in other liquor outlets, usually in the cleaning products aisle.

You can taste this style of MBA Thinking for yourself, by signing up today to do A Lunchtime MBA during the 2021 Adelaide Fringe.

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