Interview: Professor Malcolm McDonald
Marketing: A Complete Guide in Pictures
Steve Macaulay
Hello, I am Steve Macaulay and I am interviewing
Professor Malcolm McDonald about his book Marketing:
A Complete Guide in Pictures.
Now Malcolm, it is extraordinary that a serious book, one
that you expect grown ups to read, is full of cartoons and
pictures. I wonder if you can expand on what your
thinking is there.
Malcolm
McDonald
Well, successful marketers, apart from getting all the
basics right, they also do a lot of differentiation that is
required by the market. And unfortunately with
marketing books, and the world is awash with marketing
books, they are all the same – the 4Ps – they all say the
same things in the same way. I wanted a book that
would differentiate itself in the market place, that people
would enjoy and we all know being experienced lecturers
that pictures mean far more than words on paper. So if
you combine words with pictures, I think you have got a
brilliant communication vehicle.
Unfortunately marketing as a process and as a concept
is quite complex to grasp anyway and I wanted to turn
these very, very complex concepts and processes and
make them understandable and doable by using
basically quasi cartoons to do that. I think testament to
its success, since it was launched over a quarter of a
century ago – it has been updated a few times – but it
has sold over 150,000 copies. It has been translated
into about fifteen different languages. So I seem to
have caught the right spirit in doing a pictorial guide on
marketing. And it is still going like a train, I can tell you.
Steve Macaulay
That is great. One of the things that I know you have
said a number of times is that non marketers tend to
perceive marketing still in terms of promotion. Now it
really is much more than that isn’t it?
Malcolm
McDonald
Well of course, otherwise we would be reduced to
teaching the 4Ps – product, price, place and promotion.
And of course, it is at the heart of business strategy
because any board of directors that can’t actually spell
out what its key target markets are and what its sources
of differential advantage are is really destined in an
overcrowded market to be a pimply little ‘me to’ and
Professor Malcolm McDonald
trade basically on price. So a big chunk of it is about
what you sell and who you sell it to, not how you
promote.
And just one final point about this, there are a million
marketers in the UK alone and they call themselves
marketers when in fact they do copywriting, they do
selling, they do all kinds of things – they do direct
marketing, they do advertising. And it is this, I think, this
big army of people calling themselves marketers that has
caused the confusion because most of them are
unqualified and most of them are not at the heart of
corporate strategy making, which is where of course we
have put it at Cranfield.
Steve Macaulay
So one of the key messages then that you would like
people to take away from this book is marketing is a
strategic business activity?
Malcolm
McDonald
Absolutely. For example, the sequences are quite
cleverly put together; there is one for example that
springs to mind about the difference between tactics and
short term profit making and developing long term
strategies.
There is a sequence of a boss representing the board,
sitting on the shoulders of somebody else who
represents middle management, sitting on the shoulders
of somebody else who represents the front line, the
workforce and the boss says ‘there lies gold’ and points
ahead to the gold. The person in the middle says ‘right,
that means we have got to start making a bridge, let’s
start collecting wood’ – that is the sort of implementing
the long term strategy. And as they set off down this
track, the guy at the bottom finds a piece of gold just at
his feet, bends over and he says here is some and they
all fall over. Of course that means that the long term
strategy is forgotten.
And the book is full of those wonderful little sequences
that embed in your mind for ever why strategy, long term
thinking, should always come before tactics and short
termism.
Steve Macaulay
So if the next edition is about to come out, what would
you like to put in there?
Malcolm
McDonald
Well I have done about five or six editions and each time
the core processes, of course, remain the same just as
they do in any discipline. The only things that change
are things like new media and the approach to new
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Professor Malcolm McDonald
media, obviously things like CRM – customer
relationship management – those kinds of things that
weren’t about when the first edition came out. You have
to include those kinds of things. But equally you have
the problem and challenge of taking those quite complex
concepts and actually turning them into something that a
human being can actually understand and do something
about. That is the magic of the pictorial guide.
Steve Macaulay
And it has succeeded very well. Thank you very much
Malcolm.
Malcolm
McDonald
My pleasure.
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