Transcript of Marketing Is a Lie? The Truth About Branding, AI & Consumer Psychology | Giuseppe Stigliano New

Marketing is not about making people want things. Mm-hmm. It is about making things people want.

Is there something called ethical marketing?

I do believe so.

So how would you survive with ethical marketing in a world of consumerism?

You talk about interacting with your customers. You say targeting, a marketing campaign. That's war jargon.

Marketers are just liars. So marketers, like, you know, no one trusts because the perception of marketer is to basically create this nervous anxiety in you that you need to have something.

You don't buy things. Just for, let's say, transactional aspects. But more often than not, we buy things to tell something about ourselves to ourselves and to others.

Welcome to another episode of Tomorrow Today with Shekhar Natrajan. It's my incredible honor to have the marketing genius Giuseppe Stigliano. This guy has written like 3 books with Philip Kotler. You know, basically has worked for 3 large startups. You had your own startup and you work for like, uh, you, you know, you, you were the CEO for 3 companies as well. Uh, world-renowned speaker, amazing marketing guru, TED Talk, uh, uh, genius. What else do you say? What else have I missed?

You know, after this introduction, even I am curious to hear what I have to say. Tell me more.

No, so I'm really honored to have you here because marketing is on everyone's mind these days, uh, particularly with the advent of artificial intelligence and the changing world of like content creation and content distribution. And how do you think about the brand in general? Um, and so I've been researching quite a bit about you, uh, and your thought processes. And like, you know, I, I'm really, really sure that this is going to be the most exciting conversation that we're going to have for the next 90 minutes. Um, with that, like, you know, I want to take you back to the origin days of who you are. Um, where did you come from? What is your background? How did you get into what you got into? Just like, just get us like to that, through that phase of your life.

So I was born 45 years ago in southern Italy in a region called Calabria. Uh, it's the very end of the boot.

Oh, I thought like you're 70 years old.

Uh-huh. That was, that was in my previous life. 45.

45. But you have the wisdom of a 70, 70-year-old.

I thought you were saying you look like you're 70. Okay, that's, that's better. That's better. So yeah, I was born in southern Italy, which is what you would you call in the middle of nowhere. That's what it is, right? So it's not Milan, It's 1,200 kilometers south of Milan. It's not exactly where you would start doing marketing, if you know what I mean. But I had the opportunity to grow up in an analog world, so that was a good thing. I remember waiting in line to make a call at the phone booth, receiving fax at the very beginning of my career. And so I guess that was part of my initial thoughts about communication, about marketing, even though I didn't know at the time. Another thing that interested me a lot back then was theater. I loved the idea of being on a stage, sharing my ideas with an audience. I didn't care about recording something and having a screen or whatever other medium between me and the audience. I really liked the idea of being there, We didn't know this. I thought I wanted to be an actor. I didn't know at the time that the reality was that my deep passion and one day mission in life was knowledge sharing.

And so growing up, I moved to Milan. I started studying marketing. I started working with a professor.

But like, tell me more about your parents.

My parents were—

Your parents, your siblings, like—

Both doctors. So I grew up in an hospital basically because they were both working all day long, basically. So I spent a lot of time with my grandparents because of course they were working a lot.

And, uh, so, but who was like inspiring you to get on the stage?

So my dad, as a doctor, used to be also a speaker, like at conferences. And I didn't know at the time, but of course that was part of my inspiration. The theater was part of an inspiration as well because I fell in love with the idea of being on a stage You know that dopamine and adrenaline overdose that you get every time you get on stage? It's addictive. You know, it's literally addictive.

Is it like self-fulfilling, or like, yeah, you feel like you're on the top of the world, or what?

First, you first, you feel scared, you know, that, that I would say 5 minutes before, it's like the equivalent of— you remember when you were going at school and it was your turn and you're like, I don't remember anything. I don't know what to do. I don't even know how to start. It's just that typical. And at the same time, it's the adrenaline when you are there. And at least this is what happens to me. I always feel that pressure and anxiety right before. Once I get there, I just feel like I belong. It's, I don't know how to explain. You're just in your habitat. You are in your environment, you're like, okay, I belong, I know what to do. Even, it's not about the words, you don't think about what you have to say anymore. Of course you have your slides and everything, but that's not the point. And I—

Do you prepare lines?

Yes, I think I have at least 3, 4 lines per keynote that I know I want to share because first, they help me as milestones along the journey. And at the same time, I know, you know, I always believed good speakers are remembered, great speakers are repeated. So if you have a strong line that people can take and use to— because it's great to distill something, to share something in a more effective way, you should use it. And so I work hard now with Claude and ChatGPT. But I work hard to clean and refine and simplify. So, you know, I have at least probably 50 lines now that depending on the keynote, depending on the talk, I would use.

Got it, got it, got it. So somehow you were fascinated by the stage. Yeah. So the apple never falls far from the tree. So your father was a speaker. So that inspired you to get there.

Never a professional speaker, but a speaker.

But like a speaker, yep. And so, um, and then like siblings, no siblings?

Brother is 13 months younger, so we grew up together. He's my best friend.

Yeah.

And, uh, he lives Milan. 3 kids.

What do you do?

That's an interesting question. He's been a banker for HSBC for 20 years. Then one day he went to New York with his wife, was walking down the street and saw a store called Dry Bar, which is basically a hairdresser. You go there, you can book with an app, you choose your style, you go there, and in whatever, 25 minutes, they, they, you know, you get out exactly like in the picture if you want. And he liked the idea because it's called Dry Bar because it's like a bar. So you sit down and you order a drink, and while you drink it, someone is taking care of your hair. So he liked the idea and wanted to replicate it in Milan. He did it with his left hand while working for HSBC, and it went very well. So at some point he decided to quit. So he was a banker, but now he's an entrepreneur in the beauty industry, if you want, because he's launching a beauty line of products that they sell to the stores. It's opening multiple stores. He has drained my savings at some point because, you know, the friends and family phase at the very beginning, right?

That was literally Family and friends, family first, and I was his only brother, so he's like, "Do you have any savings?" I'm like, "Sure." But I'm so happy to have supported the venture because it's going very well and because it's my brother.

Yeah, very good, very good, very good. So then you got to Milan, you did like marketing.

Got to Milan, fell in love with marketing.

Why? What did you like about marketing?

Day one, someone told me something something that changed my understanding and my life. They said two things, actually. One, which is one of my lines: marketing is not about making people want things, it is about making things people want.

What is the difference?

You don't push. It's not about an entrepreneur somewhere waking up in the morning and say, what else can we make and sell? Or my gut feeling, this is gonna work. And then, oh, let's call the marketing folks so that they can make people want things. No, especially today in a saturated world where supply exceeds demand by far, you need a marketer who is the one in charge of knowing and understanding the market, sharing his perspective or her perspective with the entrepreneur, or being the entrepreneur themselves and say, I've perceived this lack of offer, have perceived this unmet need. I've perceived this opportunity to do something in a different way thanks to AI, or to— there is a need that is met in a suboptimal way. Let's work together and come up with an idea. So the marketing guru, let's call it, is someone who understands demand and then works together with the tech genius, let's call it tech for a while, for now, or whatever other skill to develop a better, whatever better means, way to answer that question. So the question is not what else can we make and sell, is what else can we do for the customer?

Whatever the customer is, can be B2B, B2C. So if you focus on that, you're adding value. You're not adding noise so that you need marketers to cut through the noise to sell something to someone. So it's not about making people want things, it's about making things people want. And then they will sell. You don't need to push, right?

They will be happy. One is the pull and the other is the push.

Correct. So that's one thing that they told me, and I was like, all right, that's different, right? Sounds different because my role, my job, wouldn't be passive— not passive, but secondary to ideation and innovation. It would be part of the process. I should be sitting down together with finance people, tech people, and so on and so forth to come up with an answer to something. That's cool. That was one thing. Second thing, we don't consume products, services, experiences. We don't buy things just for, let's say, transactional aspects. But more often than not, we buy things to tell something about ourselves, to ourselves and to others. So if you buy a Porsche or a Ferrari, right, while you drive it, you're telling something about yourself to yourself. Like, you feel in a certain way, and that's the medium through which you can feel that way, because someone, a marketer, has built meaning around an object, which is in turn the value, the incremental value that you generate. It's not just a transaction. So you tell something about yourself, about yourself, to yourself, and then to others because you perceived in a certain way. So it's about identity and image, both.

So it's not just consumption. Of course, if you buy toothpaste, it's not the same, right? Sometimes it's functional. Sometimes there is no emotional involvement. But there is an opportunity to go beyond transactions and to build meaning. And in a world where people need meaning in a world where people need to acquire. It's like a shortcut, right? If I'm driving a certain car, wearing in a certain way, or if I refuse brands, or if I want emerging brands, or if I wear a Patagonia, I'm telling something about myself to myself and to the others. It's a shortcut. And we need that because it's part of the process of building our image and our identity. And these two things were like, wow, this is not just selling stuff, right? This is about psychology, sociology, anthropology, ideation, innovation. I love that. And last but not least, I fell in love with the idea that marketing was not like a small vertical tiny niche or discipline. It required so many different skills and influences. And so it was very I consider myself an eclectic person, so I get bored if you, if you close me in a vertical, narrow, uh, let's say, uh, silo.

And this idea that I could cherry-pick stuff and get contaminated and cross-fertilize, I loved it. That was a long answer, sorry.

No, it's great, it's great. So basically, so do you subscribe into then the Steve Jobs principle that like customer doesn't know what he wants and we have to create it?

Of course, of course. It's not their job. The job of a customer is to tell, or not even tell, show, express needs. That's it. That's their job. It's like a kid. And in 1960, Theodore Lewitt published this article on HBR, The title was Marketing Myopia. And the idea was precisely that if you are in the business of horses and you ask people, what do you want? What is your need? They will tell you faster horses. They can't tell you trains or cars because they see their needs and they see the current way to meet their need. They don't see the future. It's the entrepreneur together with the other innovators, the marketers, who should say, "Hey, I think thanks to technology, we can meet that need in a different way, faster, more efficient, more effective," whatever it is, right? And that's the famous Henry Ford quote who said, "If we asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." So it happened the same to Kodak, right? Kodak thought they were in the business of films. You're not. You're in the business of the preservation of memory. If thanks to an invisible enabler called digital electricity, technology, whatever, you can preserve memories in a different way, either you adapt or you die.

Because your job as an entrepreneur, as a company, is not to sell products. It's to make people happy. That's your job. And if to make them happy, focusing on the needs you serve, solving. You can do it in a different way. You need to adapt, or someone else will do it better than you. And that's what's happening with AI today, right? AI is the invisible enabler, the equivalent of electricity, of other invisible enablers of the past, that allows us to make people happy, if you want, in a different way. So for incumbents, either they adapt or they die. That's what it is. It's, it's evolution. It's digital Darwinism.

So tell me more about like, how is this different than jobs to be done, and how do you define jobs to be done for the regular user here, like the audience?

I would say the, the more direct and simple way to define it is what is the North Star for you in your business? That's the way I frame it. So if the North Star— and again, I'm going back to the previous framework— if the North Star is what else can we make and sell, the job to be done will be related to that. So you will focus on, uh, you know, promotions, pushing more, doing advertising, and you know, you will focus on, on, on, on every single thing you can do to do more of the what else can we make and sell. But if your North Star is what else can we do for the customer genuinely, because you take for granted that if you do something for the customer, that customer will be willing to buy your product. And at that point you will be able to create value. And it's value. So trading first is perception. That's why marketing is important. Second is a trading. You deliver value. You get something back. That something back is, of course, the profit of the company and everything else we know. So I think the job to be done is both the, the cause and the effect of what is your North Star.

Got it. So, but most companies seem to, like, you know, you, you brought up the example of Kodak, and it is about, like, you know, capturing memories, not like essentially selling films. Most companies are caught in their own problems trying to understand their identity, like, because you, you become a victim of the, the, the circumstances you live in. Like, you think, this is, this is my life, correct? So how do you, how do you elevate that? Because, like, you know, if I think about a company like Kodak, right, there is a CEO traditionally done things, like, you know, you don't revisit those realities, you don't question them because they're so sacred to the company. And then, like, all of a sudden, like, you know, you're caught, like, napping, so to say, where the real purpose of your company was not exactly what you thought. You thought product is the company, but the purpose is lost. Right? So how do you, as a marketer, remind them of the purpose of the company? Like, what is it? What is the— what is the process?

That's one of my favorite questions. All right, so every company at some point was a startup. Yeah, by definition. Yeah, there was at some point an entrepreneur, a spark, an idea, something. Okay, but those days are typically forgotten at some point, which is what you say. Is it possible to reignite that spirit? Rarely. Why? Because every single company reaches a stage where you need structure, otherwise it doesn't work. And that structure is typically visualized— that's what I tell my students at UCL here in London— as a pyramid. You have resources, processes, and values. Resources are your people, can be tangible or intangible, right? It's your people, the factories, your brand, your credibility, your reputation, and so on. And the longer the tenure of everyone, the longer the time the company has been operating, the more you have resources. Then you have processes, which are the patterns of interaction of all the resources. The bigger the company, the longer the history, the more they are, and they are your roots. They are what keeps the company there in the middle of volatility. So they are important, but at the same time, in a volatile world where you need to adapt, it's a legacy, right?

It keeps you— so it's pros and cons. And then you have values, both in terms of what are the values that drive you, but also what is the financial value? The company frame the concept of value. These three things are the problem. Why? Let's say you are Blockbuster. Let's say startup knocks the door and says, hey, we are pretty much in the same business. But instead of creating traffic towards stores to rent a DVD, we deliver the DVD at home. And maybe one day we'll do the streaming. I didn't— I don't know if they said that. They probably didn't know. But that's still different business model, but same industry. Why don't we do something together? Now, I'm oversimplifying, but that's the point. Imagine Blockbuster. It's not just that they thought they were in the business of DVDs and retail, which was the case. Instead, they were in the business of home entertainment, which is the need of the customer. But they forgot that, maybe. But it's not just that. It's that resources, process, and values played a role. Why? Because all their resources were hired to do different job. They were skilled to do a different job.

They were trained to do that job. So they didn't have resources able to deliver against different expectations and to do a different job. Their processes were designed for those resources to interact in an effective and efficient way. They were not designed to do a different job. Their values, in terms of moral values, let's say, they were cherry-picked to do a different job. And when it comes to financial values, imagine you are a big fish that size, you are market leader. You probably are thinking, wait a minute, there's this tiny startup who is operating in a collateral industry of delivery. How big is that market? Tiny. What is our pipeline to open, I don't know, 1,000 stores in the next 12 months in China and India, maybe. How big is that opportunity considering what we know, our resources, person, fund? 100 times bigger. We should focus on that. It's just inevitable. And then you call the bank and say, "Hey, you know, we have a mortgage with you, but we have decided to change the business model. We have decided to deliver, so forget about the business plan that we gave you." upon which you gave us the money, because we're going to do— you will never do that.

Last but not least, the average tenure of a CEO, CFO, and CMO is respectively 5, 3, and 4 years. Would you engage in a risky, transformative process to the point that you change the business model and the value proposition of the company to the point that you have to go through redundancy plans because you have to get rid of people who don't have the skills you need and change the process and so on and so forth, knowing that probably in a couple of years you will leave the company? It's different if you are the entrepreneur, if it's your company. In that case, you think long-term by definition, but still. So it's tricky. So to answer your question, how do you do? That's a $1 billion question. It depends. But what I can tell you is that the way I help companies doing that is not the romantic, let's reignite the spirit of the first day, because it never works. I mean, not in my experience. It is more practical. I always say vision without judgment is called enthusiasm. That's another line. So what is the practical aspect of this? Address this concept called organizational ambidexterity, which says in a fast-changing world, your job should be to be 70%, even 80% focused on doing what you're doing and always keep 20, 30% of the company in full exploration mode, which means checking the market, seeing what startups are doing, acquire startups, partner with startups, do acqui-hire of startups to bring innovation.

What you can't do is doing everything under the same roof. You need to spin it off. You need to give the team who is in charge of that freedom to operate without the boundaries of the company, because if they need to follow the same processes and procedures, they will never do it. You will never acquire a small business because it's too small compared to the value the value system of the company. You would never be able to speed up a process because you need to follow procedures. So they should be independent. In some cases, spin-off. In other cases, just independent. But give them the freedom to be innovators. Otherwise, I always tell my clients and partners, sell the company because you will get obsolete before you realize it.

Which company?

I'm completely agnostic to the same.

The small or the big?

No, the big.

The big.

The big. Yeah. I mean, I don't see any value proposition in a world dominated by AI, considering how impactful it would be, standing still and being successful in 5 years. There's no way. It's going to change everything.

Got it. So let's come back because it's like a very interesting topic. I've lived that like for many, many, many, many, uh, years, like 23 years actually, to be honest. Um, and we gotta unpack like even the, the whole market dynamics in all of this. Because example, like, and we can touch on it later on, like Kodak is a great example and everyone gives Kodak as the example, but Coca-Cola and PepsiCo withstood, uh, the market dynamics, right? Like, you know, new companies came and but the product was so desirable that it tested like, you know, it's kind of like, you know, nothing is able to kind of shake the dominance in the market, like even today, right? So, so there's something about like the industry dynamics that needs to be also accounted for in all of this conversation. So, and also the internal antibodies that kick in, which I've lived a lot, uh, corporate antibodies. As soon as you get an innovator, like, you know, antibodies keep kicking.

I know the story.

Yeah, like, you know, then they give you pneumonia. But having said that, like, you know, so, um, so you went to Milan, you, you, you got educated in marketing, you had this wisdom about like what are the first principles of marketing, which is, which is what like makes you very unique as a person, uh, because you you begin to appreciate like a profession better if you're stooped in the first principle better. Like if you understand the first principles better, which is what I gather from talking to you. Now what happened after that? Like, you know, you did your master's in, uh, marketing, marketing, and then like you did your PhD.

I did my PhD. Um, the idea was to—

in marketing too?

Economics, but yeah, but the focus was marketing and consumer behavior. The title of my thesis was The McDonaldization of Society.

McDonaldization.

Yeah, the idea was if at the time everybody was talking about globalization, right? So the idea that the world would be flat, that everybody would eat the same food, speak the same language, and so on and so forth. So McDonaldization was a way to say— that was the title of a book pretty popular book at the time. And so I worked with the author of the book, this professor at the University of Maryland. I moved there and spent some time working with him on the idea that the risks and opportunities of globalization, let's put it this way, in terms of culture, consumer behavior, language, all the implications on society and business, of course.

Got it. And then how— what was the summary of the McDonaldization?

Well, the idea was McDonald's was all about efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control.

Control how? Like it's a franchise?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was insane, the level of control they had. You know, same hamburger, same sandwich, you know, everything. And the idea was if you are in the middle of nowhere in Africa or in Asia, you can go there and find same food. It was reassuring, right? So the core of the thesis and the idea was if you do that, you can scale and be the leader in the world, which was the case at the time. But fast forward 25 years, you go to McDonald's and in Italy you find panino with prosciutto. And you're like, what about the efficiency, predictability, control, and replicate the same food, same— It didn't work simply because the world pushed back. The people pushed back. We didn't like that idea that much. So globalization was an interesting vision. And of course, it was also a great opportunity for markets. But people, human beings, we didn't like that in the end. Of course, we absorbed part of the cultural industry of the United States with the movies and everything. But today, Bollywood and Korean movies and Italian movies and European movies, they're pretty popular as well. I would say almost equivalent in terms of influence.

So it didn't happen. So reality is my thesis was wrong. My thesis was wrong in terms of the world didn't go in that direction. I would add, thank God. And I really like—

When did you realize that?

I was living in France. My roommate was from Manchester. I was the one cooking because I was the Italian and supposed to be good at cooking, and he was the one taking care of everything else in the house. One day we go to the gym. After the gym, we say, let's have a steak. We go to the supermarket, we buy steak, we go home, I cook, he takes care of the table. And at some point he puts a beer for me and cold milk for him. I got him and say, are you drinking cold milk with a steak? So yeah, and I started laughing. It's like, what the hell is this? You don't do that. You never do that. I know how to eat. I'm Italian. I know. Following week he did the same. And again, oh, come on with this milk. Milk with steak? Cold milk? Yeah, okay, like a glass of cold milk.

How does that like even— okay, 30 weeks. Weird dude, huh? Was it like weird dudes like hanging out with weird dudes?

I was like, I don't know you, dude. I know who you are, but listen to this. So week 1, I was like, dude, this is not— it's— you don't do that. Come on, stop doing it. Week 3, I found myself getting the milk from the fridge and putting on the table for him. Week 4, that was just normal. Week 5, I just took it for granted, and I got used to the fact that different, it's not necessarily worse, it's just different. That's when I realized— I started realizing that this was after your PhD. Yeah, or during the— right after, right after, right.

And, uh, did you go back and like re—

like, no, no, no, I never did that. But I'm very genuinely open about the fact that my thesis was wrong. And I think this is part of growth and self-awareness, right? Accepting the fact that sometimes you're wrong and admitting it and being vulnerable about that. I think this is part of where I got lately. I wasn't like this when I was 25, of course.

Because like, you know, I was kind of reading about like, you know, your thesis as well and other things. I found it very interesting. What I liked about the thesis was that it was kind of feeding off of the wave that like, you know, Tom Friedman actually did, like, you know, like, hey, like, the world is going to be flat and all that stuff. And it's very easy to fall into the trap that like everything is going to be globalized and everything is going to be— but, you know, I'll give you a great example, and this was the example of Coke and the marketing debacle of Coke. Okay, okay. So there was a big ad in newspaper that they put about Coke. So the guy basically is feeling very tired, is almost about to fall. Okay, the second image is he gets like a can of Coke in his hand. Okay, the third image is he basically gets up with energy and starts running. Right, so now they try to run that ad in Middle East, and in Middle East you actually read left to right. So what does it mean? I was very energetic, I drank Coke, and I fell down dead.

Exactly the opposite.

So that's the Cultural sensitivity that you need to have, right? So you always have to think global but act local.

That's why my thesis was wrong.

So, so it was— it's, it's a, it's a pretty interesting, like, fundamental thought. Like, sometimes big companies tend to miss because— and that's why, like, a lot of these large companies, when they end up going to different countries and replicate the processes, they are unaware of the cultural nuances and also don't solicit the opinion of the locals, right? Very interesting marketing lesson, right? Like, so that ad is— we lost like millions of dollars and like we had to redo all of it. And still, like, you know, like Coke is dealing with the consequences of that. Anyway, so now you did your PhD and then you were part of a startup, or you did like, you were the CEO of companies?

So right after the PhD, I was still finishing my PhD and I realized that I wasn't good enough to be a full-time professor. I was not—

why? Like, I think like you, like, you look like a professor and an actor. You could have gone both sides. You could have gone to Hollywood.

No, so when you are a full-time professor, you basically do two things: you teach and you do your research.

And not do politics?

Well, of course, and politics. Let's say three. I couldn't do politics. I was not good at politics, and I was not good at doing research. So the only thing left was teaching.

Tenuring in universities is like, oh my God, it's such a crazy politics.

But I only love the teaching part. Yeah, why? Because it was a stage with an audience. Got it. That was my real— and knowledge sharing, that was my real passion, which is why I'm a keynote speaker today, right? It's the same, same words.

What I like about you is that like you're very self-aware, you know.

Today, yes, it took a while.

Even, even at that time to have the common sense that like, you know, you may not like fit within that.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that I realized quite— at the same time I was still paid with my tuition. But basically it was PhD, you get paid as you work. So I couldn't work for any company. So although I realized I didn't want to be a full-time professor, I couldn't work for any company. I couldn't send a CV. So technically the only thing I could do was do a startup and or be an advisor, or be an advisor. You're 24, nobody would believe you, you know. And so I decided to start the company. And the company together with a couple of business partners, and the idea was to do unconventional marketing. Again, everybody was doing the same thing, incumbents were there, there were some emerging techs because of course it was beginning of digital, but also emerging different ways of doing marketing, different ways of promoting products, guerrilla marketing we used to call it, viral marketing and so on. So I decided to double-click on that. We launched the company, and then after a few years it went well. And after a few years we started conversations with, with large holding, and the holding was interesting in acquiring my company.

And that's how I joined the large holding as a, as an entrepreneur at the time, right? They were like, we want you because you're an entrepreneur, you know how to start up a business. We need to evolve, we need to change things. Why don't you work with us? And so I said yes to that. I joined the big holding and I stayed 10 years with the big holding. And I become for the first time a general manager and then a CEO. And then—

What was that name of the company?

Well, the holding was WPP.

WPP.

And at some point I was the CEO of J. Walter Thompson, the advertising agency. So I spent a lot of time in London. At some point I moved to London. I was the global CEO of another agency. And so that was my life, right? And then one day I asked myself the toughest question you can ask yourself as a CEO, especially if this was your company. Would you, would you hire you as a CEO? And my answer was no.

Why?

First, because I knew at least 4 people who could do that job better than me.

Second, why did you feel inadequate?

So I've been living with my imposter syndrome forever because I've always put myself into rooms I didn't belong to gain the right to belong, right? That was my— that's always been my strategy, right? I put— I throw myself somewhere and I figure it out. And I love that. I love the inadequacy. I love the adrenaline. I love the challenge. And then I love leaving that room saying, you know what, it wasn't too difficult, right? After, during the process, because I think there is no way you can be a successful CEO or entrepreneur running your company unless you're fully focused. There's no way. That should be the first thing you think of in the morning and the last thing, and you should be all in on that. I wasn't built that way. I had too many different interests. I had already invested in at least 5, 6 startups that I was advising. I still wanted to give keynotes and talks, and I was teaching, and the time and energy left to run the company was still high, probably 80% of the energy, but it was not the 110% that the company deserved and needed. That was why at some point I realized that the point was not that I couldn't run that company.

Point was that I couldn't be a CEO and I couldn't be an entrepreneur. I had to be more someone with a portfolio career because that was my DNA, that was how I was built, and that was my— the, the way I would fully be myself. And so I started brainstorming on an umbrella that would become my mission. And the way I frame it is knowledge sharing. That's what I do. I do knowledge sharing in 3 different contexts: lecture rooms, boardrooms, and ballrooms. Because I teach, I advise, and I give keynotes. So it's lecture rooms, boardrooms, and ballrooms.

So, and then, So you left all of this because you felt that like, you know, the role of a CEO is to be 100% focused on one thing and not like many things.

I think so.

Like, how do you like— how do you think about like someone like Elon Musk who has like so many obligations, including 15 wives?

First, I don't know.

I don't know, like probably he's on to like wife number 18 now. Yeah, and children number 25, like with Alpha Z Protocol, whatever names.

Yeah, yeah. So that's an interesting one. So first, even in my job as an advisor, when they say, yeah, but Amazon is doing this, I always say, assume you're not Amazon, assume you're not Elon Musk. Let's start from the fact that these are the one— not even 0.01%. Okay, so first, I don't know how he does it. I assume that he has some capabilities and skills I don't have, let's put it this way. Second, I think you probably reach a level where you can hire very senior, smart, even smarter than you CEOs to do the job, and you manage to be present enough but without telling them what they should do, or you tell them what they should do because they are hired to do what you tell them to do, and you manage not to sleep and to be fully dedicated to your ventures. Not venture at that point. Point is, I also wanted to have a life. I also have two kids. I also wanted to travel the world. I tried, you know, I had too many conflicting priorities to be fully dedicated to one or a few things. So it didn't work for me.

I'm not saying it doesn't work for anyone, but I do believe you need laser focus if you want to be a CEO or entrepreneur. You can have interests, but that should be your main priority— the company or the companies— and the one you would sacrifice everything and anything for. Otherwise, it's like, it can work, you can be lucky, but you drastically reduce the possibility for you to succeed. That's my— or at least you need someone who is 100% dedicated and is either smarter than you or a yes man, but not both.

Yeah, very interesting. Um, very interesting. So you actually said you, you go to the boardrooms, you consult with them, um You basically give lectures and you also go and do, um, uh, what would I call it? Keynotes, right? So which of the three you like the most?

Keynotes. Keynote speaking is the adrenaline. Okay, that's insane.

So, but what do you give as a keynote?

I love the word and I love the question because that's precisely what a keynote speaker should do. Should give. Many keynote speakers I see on stage, they are takers, they're not givers. They are there for themselves. They are there to show how much they know. They are there to teach. They are there to, you know, talk about their experience. That's wrong, right? That should be a means to an end. The end should be, what are you giving so that they can have some sort of transformation, they can do things in a different way tomorrow morning? Which is the customer-centric approach that I brought from my previous life to the stage. What I talk about basically is, so the perimeter is business innovation. Why? Because I assume that my marketing background allows me to understand where the market is going, and I tend to then apply my lens, which is what I've learned, what I've studied, researched, investigated, this experience I have, to what I see and to translate it into a language that the company would understand so that they can act upon those understandings. That's my job. I'm an interpreter, if you want. I try to read the market thanks to what I've learned, my trips, the fact that I lived in 7 different countries in the last 20 years.

So the cultural nuances, the respect for differences that I've learned, the academic rigor that I gained through the PhD, the hands-on CEO experience and everything. I try to use that as a lens so that my answer to the observation is not the same as someone else. And I try to use also my experience to make it actionable for the companies I advise and for the people in the room.

So it's not just I'm gonna tell you the learnings of your boardroom appearances and the lectures to the keynote, correct?

So that it's not just someone telling you or giving you an interpretation of reality, which would be already a thing, but you deliver it in a way that is actionable, in a way that they say, this guy's helping me connecting a couple of dots, I know what to do tomorrow morning, that's my dream. So the lines, for example, are designed to do that. The concepts are designed to do that. The anecdotes— I share many anecdotes from my life, my grandmother and stuff like that, because I know that if you emotionally connect and then you summarize in a line, it will land differently. My public speaking coach always says, never tell a story without making a point. Never make a point without telling a story. If you tell the story and you don't make the point, people will be like, "Yeah, nice story, but so what?" If you only make the point and then another point and then another, they will get bored. It's like bullet points, right? Sure, you lost them. You lose them. But if you manage to do both things, and so it's the anecdote so that they emotionally connect, and then it's the point where you show that you actually know what they are going through.

And then maybe it's a line so that you fix it and they can repeat it to their teams, to themselves.

That's a dream. Got it. So is it not a little, uh, conflating in the sense like, uh, contradicting to your original thesis of like focus on one thing and not like on the other two? Like if you were to only do keynote, would you be effective if you didn't do the other two?

I think the one thing I do is knowledge sharing.

Okay, so you don't do keynote?

No, I don't see myself as someone— I, I see myself as someone who shares.

You like to share? Yeah, but like, basically— so, so, so that— okay, my, my bad, my missing—

no, no, it's just I'm agnostic to the size of the audience, if you want. I'm sharing my knowledge now. I'm learning from the questions. I'm learning from your experience. That, that this idea of deliberate learning is It's part of my life, right? I tend to learn something from every single situation, from everything. So the more you receive from the audience every time, the more you can give to the next audience, right? So my laser focus is knowledge sharing. I'm completely agnostic to the size of the audience. But if you ask me where you have the most fun, energy, adrenaline, I tell you the stage, like a big stage, the keynote, the people in the room, and so on. But doesn't mean that I don't like the lecture room or the boardroom.

Got it, got it, got it. So that you wouldn't delegate because they still needed you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. Even too much because that's the, you can't scale.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the, how many companies did you consult so far? 300 or?

287.

287.

88, today will be 88.

Oh wow.

I'm keeping track.

So like any big companies in all of that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 80% are big companies.

Companies.

Okay. I don't have a lot of experience with small medium enterprises.

So when you go in, like, what, what are you, what are you chartered to do there?

So for example, in the afternoon I'll be talking about, uh, well, the— in a nutshell, um, the world is changing faster than your ability to innovate. So how do you do? What are the guiding principles? And that's the general, and then Considering that they operate in a very regulated industry, they have a strong retail presence, which is both a liability and an asset. They have aging customers because the next generation is not using their products. So they have specific issues, right? So the concept is the world is changing faster than your ability to innovate. Considering your business, what are the guiding principles? That's the structure, right? And so yeah, that's what I'm going to talk about. And this is a keynote, but it's a beginning of a journey because I will spend in total 8 days with them from today to the end of the year advising the leadership team on this topic.

So how do you respond to the fact that, like, you know, uh, I also have experienced it, uh, the, the boards believe a third party's, uh observation about things versus your own internal teams. Like, you know, very often— and I'm not against like Accentures and McKinseys of the world and others— but I always feel that like, you know, those companies are like one of those guys who just show up, take your watch, right, look at the time, and then they tell you the time. So you are giving them your watch, which is your money, right? They are looking at the time and they are telling you the time. So, do you need that kind of reassurance from outside to understand a problem, or should you not be? Just like you said, right? Like, I was self-aware that I would be a bad professor, and hence I have to basically redirect my life. Well, I would be a very lousy CEO because I have so many different interests. So you were self-aware and you were redirecting yourself into the direction of where you wanted to go. It was self-actuated. Yeah, it was not like driven from outside.

So why do people rely on external parties to come and tell you what to do? Can they not figure out what to do themselves?

So there are different layers. Layer 1, sometimes you need the stamp of the BCG, Bain, McKinsey, and the likes.

Right.

Because you have maybe shareholders, and you are transforming the company. And of course, you want— you're the CEO, so the final yes or no will be yours. But if things go south, and you can say, Guys, McKinsey confirmed that this was the good decision. It is to some extent, and in certain rooms, a way to lower the pressure.

Is it CYA? Cover your ass?

Oh, yeah, yeah. That's precisely what it is, in some cases. Yes. In other cases—

Liability reduction.

Correct, liability reduction. In other cases, it is genuine validation. Meaning, I think this is right, but I welcome an external eye on this, an external perspective. So it's, it's genuine in those cases. In other cases, it's, I really don't know what to do, and so I need someone who helps me. Now, before 1970, a consultant was someone with gray hair with a lot of experience in an industry who could consult because of the experience he or she had. After that, because of globalization, McKinsey and BCG and the likes invented the supply chain of advisory and consulting. Why? Because the world was flat. And something that would work for a bank in Hong Kong would work for a bank in New York. And so they could replicate. So they could just hire very smart kids with top grades from top schools teach them what to do. And if one of them would be burned out, you could just change the guy because it was a supply chain. What's the prerequisite of this? Stability. Because you replicate. But in this world, that doesn't work anymore. If you add to that the fact that the time and material business model where you bill hours, you make clients pay for an output, not for the outcome, but output.

AI is killing that. You see the perfect storm for consulting firms and advisory firms. Why? Because they cannot charge you the output anymore, because the output can be done by Claude in no time. And so it's no longer about how many people for how much time and how many reports and how many, and the time and the watch. Doesn't make sense anymore. So either they commit to the outcome or they have no job in the future. That's how I see it. So if you ask me, I think company will still need advisors and consultants, not the same, right? I'm an advisor, meaning I show up once a month or once a quarter and I advise. I'm not a consultant. I don't follow the rollout of the project. It's not my job anymore. They will need both to get an external perspective, to get validation, or to get approval in some cases, uh, or to get an answer. It will always be the case, but the business model, the way it works It will be very different in the next few years, and probably we will go back to the ability of someone with more experience to read the room, understand the concept, understand the evolution of the industry, understand the market, and tell you, "Hey, you've been too much on your product and you forgot that your job is to make your client happy.

Sorry to say, but there is a new way to do that." Have you ever thought about it? And they would probably tell you, of course, dude, I'm not stupid, but I'm not doing it for this reason, this reason. This is very good. Let's focus on those reasons then, because if you don't do it, you would be obsolete in no time. That's more or less the way I see it.

Got it. So of the 300 companies or the 288 companies that like you have consulted, what's the pattern?

There are plenty of them, but the journey is always what I've said before, right? Everybody's been a start— every company has been a startup at some certain point. The more you grow, you— the more you need structure, otherwise it doesn't work because you cannot manage people. And that is when you start diluting the original dream, but there is no alternative. And then at some point you hire people who are very good at doing what you do today. You design processes to make it very efficient, scalable— economies of scale, scope, and learning. And at some point, you end up being very good at doing something, but if the competitive advantage that you have is no longer sustainable for 25 years or 50 years or 100 years, it's transient because the world changes, you end up being a legacy incumbent company, slow elephant, and you struggle. So the world changes faster than your ability to innovate. So what do you do? That what you do is so subjective because it depends on the company, the CEO, if there's an entrepreneur, if there's a manager, if the manager's leaving, if he's coming, what's the competitive landscape, what's the culture of the people, you know, so many variables.

They need help to figure out what's the answer, but the pattern is the same.

Got it, got it. So how do you, how do you like deal with companies like Coke, P&G, Unilever, which is evergreen. You probably always need a tissue paper irrespective of what it is, right? You probably always need like some sort of a refreshment, right? So are these like, are these more sustainable businesses and business models, or like, do you also see that getting like—

so first, if you are that big in terms of market share, simply the fact that people age 12 and below are less interested in your product is a massive problem. Because even if you miss 0.5% of the next generation, you are basically putting the company, jeopardizing the future of the company. Because you're that so big that every single, so the fact that you're big and you've been successful doesn't mean that future success is guaranteed.

So you need to— Okay, maybe Coke is a bad example. Like tissue paper.

Okay, so that's— we're talking about the product now, not the brand, right? So, okay, so yeah, assuming that we will always need a product, by definition it would be a saturated market. So by definition there will be a lot of competition. So by definition there would be a race to the bottom in terms of the cheapest option, because people are not buying value and brand, they're buying the solution to a problem. So that would be what we call a red ocean. With many sharks eating meat and so on and so forth. So that's a very interesting scenario for a marketer because there is no possibility to build a brand. There's a lot of competition. There are so— it's a saturated market. So it's interesting but also very dangerous because the minimum— dynamics, yeah. So it's still an interesting scenario, right? So I agree with you, people will always need that, but it doesn't mean that there is no room for people like me to advise, help, support, inspire. Because again, there is a very intense competition. The commoditization of the, the market is the real problem, and it's inevitable at that level.

Yeah, got it. So, so, so what is— so like, so can you unpack for me the hierarchy of, of products then? Like, so there is commoditized markets, then there is sort of like, so let's, let's— cyclical, or like, you know, like what, routine, routine, yeah, like, you know, consumer products, sort of brands. And then there are innovative products, and then there is digital products.

I don't see how would you— how would you— standalone category. I would see, I would see that there are commodities.

Yeah, which is your, which is your tissue papers and all those guys.

Okay.

And in that, in that case, it's basically you're trying to protect against commoditization.

Yeah, you try to build a brand knowing that the brand for toilet paper is— yeah, it's relevant because you're still telling a story.

And they would, they would want like more babies to be born, so more asses to wipe.

And depending on the product, the product—

yes.

Then opposite of the spectrum, you have hyper luxury, which is all about status. It's all about, you know, it's all about if you know, you know.

Symbolism and identity.

And beyond, because it's literally in the if you know, if you know, you know, meaning symbolism and identity is more the minus one, is when you wear a certain brand or drive a certain car because you want others to perceive you da da da. But the hyper luxury is beyond that. They don't look like they're rich. You know, it's beyond that, right? And they go to places that 99.9% of people don't even know they exist. Okay, so it's— and then you have all the nuances. I wouldn't classify digital products as something different. It's part of the story.

Everything can be a digital product, meaning you would have digital experiences but not digital products. Digital experiences are like, you know, basically blending the physical and the digital, it's not blending the physical and the digital together. Like, you know, digital product would be like something like a PayPal, like, you know, Uber as a mobility company, right. Those are, I think, like still susceptible to market dynamics, you know, like tomorrow, like let's say, like, you know, someone is— like I come up with a better version of an Uber app Uber, like, you know, spent like, I don't know, like gazillion dollars and losing a lot of money to build that app. In the modern AI world, I could probably build it like cheap with like 10 people in my shop. And that is a market like waiting to be like nailed. Or like, you know, if I have a payment company, you know, like, you know, all of the responsibilities of a payment company, I can now like, you know, do it on-chain in a different way and use altcoins. And like, you know, so there's a different kind of market dynamics there. So, so how— so that's why I brought up the whole concept of a digital product, because the digital product has different dynamics now in the AI world.

It was already digitally native, meaning fewer people were needed to kind of like give it the economies of scale and scope. In the world of AI, like, and the agent world, it is even more susceptible to be disrupted even further, to extract, extract more money.

Totally. And this is true for digital products, as you say, but I see true for, uh, physical products as well. Let me, let me articulate this. Imagine a customer journey where I wake up in the morning and I, I tell my agent, I have a very good friend coming to Madrid where I live for the weekend. He's staying at my place. He's vegetarian. He's coming from London, arriving on Friday night. So we have Friday dinner, lunch and dinner on Saturday, and lunch on Sunday. Take into consideration that he's vegetarian. Please give me 5 meals that I can cook. Build a list of ingredients, and place an order online, make sure they deliver in the next hour. Just— you just forget about it. Okay. Now imagine you have marketers somewhere in an office designing the logo, the product, the brand, the position of the product on the shelf of the store, the location of the store so that it's convenient for people and so on and so forth. Old school. And everything is created, engineered, and designed to seduce you as a human being because you were the person buying those products and finding the store convenient and finding the logo attractive and so on and so forth.

And on the other end of the spectrum, you have human beings completely offset delegating that role to their agent, which is not seducted by the same features. So even if you're making tissues, You could be impacted because the market dynamic, the way people buy, the consumer behavior will be totally different in the next months. We're not talking about years, we're not talking about 10 years, we're talking about today. And so that's why I believe that this is such an incredible opportunity for everyone on every single side of the table to come up with ideas, to innovate, to experiment, to find solutions. To find better ways to solve all problems.

Yeah, very interesting. So let's switch to Philip Kotler. How did you, how did you get up, get like, uh, get to know him? How did you write books with him? And the guy is like the god of marketing.

So first, I'm 45, he's 95.

95?

Yeah, so 50 years.

So I thought I'll go and write a book with him too. Maybe too late. Sorry.

I really, I really hope I'll get to 95 and write books with people 45, because it means that my ideas are still relevant, which is his case. Um, it's just— do you remember that movie Sliding Doors? Yeah, the sliding door moment is when you just end up being in the right place at the right time and you play your cards. That's what happened to me. I was at a conference, I gave my talk. Well, actually, I was preparing my talk and they told me Philip Kotler would be in the room. I'm like, what? Imagine I have a PhD in marketing And Philip Kotler is in the room. It's like you tell a kid, hey, you can go to the garden, there is Spider-Man there to play with you.

You know, Jesus is standing.

Yeah, exactly. And like, okay, so my superhero is there.

Wow.

And so I was of course very scared, but keynote speaking was my thing, right? I really loved doing that. So I was preparing, preparing, gave my talk, and at the end of the talk he said, congratulations on your talk. He came and said that to me. That was the 90-second best time of my life, because after 90 seconds I realized that he was saying congratulations to all the speakers. So I was like, wah, wah, wah, wah. And then I did just the sliding door moment. The guy was signing some books, some behind the scenes, like in a room, and there was a young lady trying to move a box full of Kotler's books, like signed, from one place to the other. And I did what everybody would do, an act of kindness. I said, "Can I help you? Like, that's heavy." She said, "Yeah, please." I took the box. I said, "Where do we go?" "Yeah, come, come, come, come, follow me." I got to a car which was parked right in front of the venue with a driver, like an Uber probably. With a driver, like black car. And the driver took the box from me and put it.

And the lady asked me, are you coming to the dinner of the event? And I'm like, sure, that's my once in a lifetime opportunity to have dinner with Professor Kotler. I'm one of the speakers, so I'm invited. He's like, oh, that's great, so I see you there. And then he asked me, do you have a car? Now my car was there, like parked 2 meters from the car. I would I realized the situation.

I said, no, no, you sound like me.

And she asked me, do you want to go with us? I'm like, us who? I'm like, I'm Professor Kotter's assistant. I—

yes.

And so I ended up sitting in a car with him for 40 minutes because thank God it was raining like crazy and it took a while to get to where we had to go. And I played my card. That was my 40-minute elevator pitch. He asked me questions, I answered questions. At some point he said, "You should write a book." I'm like, "I mean, you wrote 60 books. I know for you it's just you have a couple of ideas, you write a book. I don't know where to start." "No, you should write a book because you have PhD, you know how to do, and you're CEO, so you should blend the two worlds and write the book and about what you told him to me about." I'm like, "Well, thank you, but I'm not sure. I'll think about it." Then he hands me a business card and said, "If you write a book one day, send it to me." If I like it, I'll write the foreword for you. Okay, the guy sold 80 million copies. Maybe it's a good business opportunity. I should write a book. That's how I started. And then I started sending chapters and getting feedback.

And one day I sent the chapter. It was like probably 4 AM because of course I was writing on trains, planes, nights, you know. I sent the book, the chapter, and morning after I wake up with an email and the subject was, I'm not writing the foreword anymore. What did I do? What did I send? Probably the wrong attachment, whatever. I opened the email and that was a clickbait, very marketing thing because the email said, "We don't need the foreword because I'm going to be your co-author. I really like the book. Let's finish it together." And that changed my life because first book was out 7 years ago, got translated into 15 languages. People started reaching out saying, "Hey, Professor Kotter, why don't you come to Tokyo to present the book?" He was like, "I'm 87. I'm not going to Tokyo." But the other guy, my co-author, I think he's happy to travel. And so I got the first email and was like, "What's your fee?" Like, "What do you mean fee? You wanna pay me to talk?" I mean, I'm happy to go for free. I love doing that. And so I called Kotler and said, "What is my fee?" And he said, "You should start 10% of my fee." And his fee was massive.

10% of his fee was already a big figure for me. I said, okay, let's do that. And they said yes. And that's how I started.

And then like, how about the second book?

Second book was during COVID because we had a lot of time. So I was like, we should write a second book. And then third book was when I became the global CEO of a company in London because I had a very broad exposure to companies from all over the world. And I felt like I could, I had learned more and I could talk more about things. And now we're working on the fourth.

So you did not feel that you were lying to the assistant?

I— that's a good question. I never asked this question to myself. Probably yes. Yeah, I lied. No, I lied. Yeah, but no, no, no, I never got this question. It's a good one. I lied.

I lied.

So my entire career is based on a lie. That's what you're telling me, right?

No, because mine started the same way. I like, did you know the story? I'll tell you the story. So I was actually, um, I was in Atlanta, I went to Georgia Tech, and, um, uh, like, you know, the backstory, like, you know, I, I, you know, I think you can, you can watch it, it's like publicly out there. Um, I, I was sitting in the lab with like a lot of friends in 2001, the dot-com bubble like, you know, happened in all my seniors in Georgia Tech where they were not graduating. They were like hanging on to their graduate research assistantships. And so none of these guys left, so basically the funds in the school was limited for new incoming students. And the Georgia Tech ISY program, the industrial engineering program, is quite reputed and like very smart guys. Everyone is a smart kid, like, and they were like, I think that year we had like 13 Indian kids, um, in a class of like 90, which was, which was lower than usual, but extraordinary kids, extraordinary, because it's ranked number 1 for the last 20 years prior, right? So, uh, and so like none of us got except like a handful of them who are doing PhDs.

Right? And they had already gotten it. I think only 2 of them had it. So like 11 of us didn't have anything. And so we were just like hitting every professor. No professor would answer. So one of my friends, who was like my— who ended up being my roomie later on, he walks in and says, this guy is actually going to be visiting Dr. Rao Tomala at 3:30. And he's in metallurgical sciences and like, you know, he has his appointment and like they were all talking because that guy is the roommate of another guy who's in the lab. And I'm like hearing all of this and I'm going like, you know, I gotta like— then I go check up online on this professor and this guy is like the god of IBM who started this lab. Packaging research is not like regular packaging, it's like how do I put electronics in a smaller form factor, like, so which was kind of the pre, kind of, you know, era of like getting the cell phones, like the smartphones, right? And so, uh, I said, you know what, like, that guy is going to come out at 3:30, so I, I'll get to like say hi to him and I'll figure it out.

I was so desperate, by the way. So I go sit at 3:20 with my resume in hand. Angie Bauman, the lady who's actually the admin, asks, are you Ankur Agarwal? I said yes.. And I sit there. No way! Seriously! I sit there all the time. And then, like, at 3:25, Dr. Rao walks out. He's just finished up his call and he just walked out. And then I walk in, right in, and I say, I'm not Ankur Agarwal, but I'm the other guy, and here's my resume, and I desperately need funding. Can you take a look at it? What did he say? And then he starts, like, he really picks it up. Nice man, he just picks it up and he's flipping and I'm telling him my story. I think like it just was glazing, he was just like, things were getting in and getting out. And then he just flips through all of them and he said like, if the guy upstairs gives you half the money, I'll give you the other half. I said, who's the guy upstairs? Is he God? He started laughing. He said, he's another professor, you gotta go call him.

And so then he calls him and says, I'm going to send this guy up, can you take a look at his resume too and see what happens? And then so I go running upstairs, and while my friend, like the guy Ankur, is waiting and seeing the drama play out, because I actually chewed into his time, right? And then I come back and then basically I bring the other professor, I go in and basically they look at it and say, okay, like, you know, we'll figure out and we'll give you some assistantship. And then I had to pay $34. I still remember my life actually started with a lie too. I don't think, like, I don't, like, I don't know if it was a lie or it was desperation. It was, it was like common sense, maybe.

Yeah, the way I like to call it, fake it until you make it. That's what it is.

But like, it just, that was a life-defining moment for me. Uh, it was like—

so we're both liars basically.

Marketers are just liars. So that's just— that's the question for me, for you. So marketers, like, you know, no one trusts because the, the perception of marketer, um, is to basically create this nervous anxiety in you that you need to have something. Like, there's a perception that, like, you know, all marketers are out to sell you something. Thing, right? So how do you deal with that taboo that like marketers are there to get you? Because if you look at like Facebook, you look at like Google, you look at all these companies, they are all extractive economy that they play psychologically, subconsciously on your mind and try to sell you things that you don't want. They keep showing you ads all the time, they keep you running like scrolling all the times. So in the, in the, in the digital world, the market has become more perverse, um, than it was.

Short answer is I don't buy it. You know, I actually fight it. So what you describe is not marketing. Marketing, again, it's not about making people want things. Yeah, it's about making things people want. Yeah, what you're describing And again, even in the definition of Philip Kotler 45 years ago, marketing was there to create genuine value for the customer, not to get rid of what the company makes. That's, that's the definition. So point is, what you're describing is not marketing. Is—

so what is marketing?

Marketing is about creating value. Marketing is about understanding what people are lacking and figuring out how to produce it, to make it.

Now, even if you overgive it, that's the point.

First, marketing is about 4 Ps. Let me, let me wear my academic hat for a second. It's product, price, place, and promotion. Promotion is just one of the levers. Finding, defining, designing, co-designing, co-creating the right product at the right price so that you can make a profit and can be a fair price for people. Distribute it in a way that makes it available for people, digital, physical, whatever. And then promote it. Now, if you take all these levers, all these weapons, if you want, and you use it only to maximize your profit, to extract value, to manipulate people, this is not marketing. This is not because of marketing. This is you abusing something that was created to create value. So I don't— not only I don't buy, I don't respect any business who is solely founded on extracting value from people based on asymmetry that I don't see as sustainable because at some point it's a war, right? At some point either you get to the winner takes it all, which happens, or you just get—

No, when the winner takes it all, it becomes more extractive.

I guess. I guess so. Yeah. But that's 3 companies, 4 companies, 5, one per industry. That's what you can do. But I see AI, because of the democratization in terms of development and coming up with ideas and disruption that brings to these guys as well, as an opportunity to democratize in a good way the market so that more people who are genuinely interested in making profit— don't get me wrong, I want to make money and I like making money. But I just don't buy the fact that marketing is that perverse practice of manipulating and extracting value. That's not marketing. It's the abuse of something that was created in a different way. And I do believe that we can leverage AI and technology to do marketing in a proper way, which means even in a sustainable way, even—

But you've got to use the same tricks of the trade to actually— Yeah, do that, right?

Same weapons in different way. But that's why I don't like to call them weapons. But sadly, most of the words in marketing come, come from war. It's like a marketing campaign— that's war jargon. We— when, when you talk about interacting with your customers, you say targeting, which is war. It's not a war between the company and the customer. We're not in war with the customer. We should bring value to these guys. We should deliver value. We should create value. That's, that's why I insist that we need to make that shift.

But like, how do you, how do you, uh, understand the watermark between value and like excessive push, right?

Like, you know, that's the compass and the radar.

That's, that's more example, right? Like, you know, Shein as an example, right? Like, you know, it's like fast fashion. They just like sell you $5 stuff, and they keep giving you more and more of— because like you can afford a lot of $5 things, right? And it's like, it's abuse of the system, giving you more than what you need, which is actually going to have unhealthy practices for the environment as well. Correct.

But the problem is not marketing. The problem is the business model. No, no, what I'm trying to say is that that business model is not sustainable. If you double-click on that business model, you will probably realize that they're a company Yeah, yeah, because it works and of course it sells. And the dopamine hit that you get when you buy stuff, that's that. But that's consumerism, that's capitalism, it's marketing, you know what I mean? Is that we have designed a society that works in a certain way, good or bad, and we're using, abusing the tools we have to do more of that. But that's not, you know what I mean? That's why I don't buy the idea that marketing is responsible for that. That capitalism pushed to the extreme.

So, but what is the role of marketing then? What is ethical marketing?

In that case, is push, push, push, push.

How do you define it? Is there something called ethical marketing?

I do believe so.

Like, what would you— how would you do— how would you actually— so how would you survive with ethical marketing in a world of consumerism and capitalism?

Patagonia.

Yeah, but like, that's one-off.

No, yeah, but that's the same that happens with the chains, right? In some— that these are the extremes there are some nuances, right? There are many companies who have realized that they can—

so can you go convince any company today that like people should buy less? No, not more.

No, that's— that as long as the dominant business model is capitalism, that's a nonsense. It doesn't work.

Yeah, so in a way, like our marketing— so what is the role of a marketer in that case then? Like how would you be like Like, how would you look at yourself in the mirror and say, like, you know, like, I, like, I know that I like my— like, I'll give you my example. Yeah, my wife is the nicest person in the world. She's like, she's divine, to be honest. And her heart craves for simple things like animals, veganism, protecting the society and all that stuff. She's a banker by profession. And I said, hey, like, you know, you have an MBA, you're brilliant. She's like, she's lights out brilliant than me. Like, you know, my son got all inheritance from her. So, uh, and she was working in a bank, and she started working in a bank, and then like, you know, 9 months later she comes and tells me Dude, I really don't want to do this. That's not for me. So she said— I said, what happened? She said, these guys are asking me to sell more plastic to all these guys, like credit cards, and I know that people already have too many credit cards.

Why do I want to sell more debt to people? That's against my will and my ethics, and I simply refused to do it. And she just walked out. Beautiful, right? So I wish more, more people did something like that.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, I totally agree.

So her divinity, like, and I never said, I never said you should go work after that because I felt like she's gonna lose— she wants to wake up and look at the mirror every day and say, I am doing right by the society. And most companies fail to do that. So how, as marketers, our role as marketers, like, be, you know, kind of redefine in the future world where AI may destroy a lot of these jobs and our ability to afford may go down, but we are yet actually giving more things to more people and making them even more poor. How do we, like, how do we deal with that? Is it a philosophical question?

It is, it is, it is, it is. So I really like the question. It is indeed a philosophical question. The reality is that, just to be very concrete, the vast majority of marketers are doing what they're asked to do. So if they work for a company that sells plastic, they sell more plastic because they need to pay their bills, they need to pay the school for their kids. That's their job and they do it. It's the same that happens to people who work for alcoholic brands or for tobacco, in the tobacco industries or other industries. You just do what you got to do because you need to pay the bills and let's face reality. So we can't say that it's their responsibility to do what your wife wonderfully did. And they had the courage, the will, the possibility, everything to do it. So a lot of respect. Having said that, most of the people out there don't have that privilege. Let's, let's face reality. So it's bigger, right? It's philosophical, as you said. Um, having said that, I worked for a company, uh, I was the executive director of Europe of an advertising agency, and the founder decided deliberately not to work for certain companies.

Like, he blacklisted companies. That's a good example, right? Courageous, brave example. Another example would be instead of asking people to buy more, you can educate people using marketing tools to buy better and to pay more for the same. So in theory, you can do the trade-up of value, and so that you tell them, don't buy a new blazer every season, but buy a better quality blazer so we can better pay the people. But it's philosophical, it's not for everyone. There will always be someone who tries to hack the system. That's why I'm saying it's philosophical on the one hand, and it's beautiful, but it's also the system, the regulators, the, the government. We should change the incentives. Europe, for example, I gave a talk for the Independent Retail Europe Association recently. They're lobbying so that companies that are not operating in Europe respect the same rules, so that if everybody respects the same rules, the competition will be more fair, and at the same time, we will avoid pressure to sell for cheap and to make the company less sustainable and so on and so forth, because it's bigger than the role of a marketer or a CEO or a company, because these guys need to pay the bills, and let's face reality.

So I wanna ask you a couple more questions. Is it okay? Yeah. Okay. So you made a comment that there are more smartphones than toilets.

Yeah. That's true. There are more smartphones than toilets in the world. This is insane.

So how do you fix that?

So first, truth is, truth is that typically the smartphone is used by one person and the toilet by— so, you know, it's true, but it doesn't necessarily mean what it meant. Okay, first, that was a powerful— but two, we need to create more value for society And I do believe there is a way, because we need to manage contradictions. I do believe there is a way to create profit for the company and value for society. There is a way. There is always a way. It's probably not the immediate answer. It's not the immediate solution, but it's definitely a way. And of course, you cannot use the toilet and the smartphone for the same purpose. So we still need both. But in terms of proportion, we should allow more people to have access to a toilet than to a smartphone. Having said that, probably the way for them to build their own house and to have their own toilet is to use the smartphone in a proper way. So it also goes through education. It also goes through democratization of technology, AI agents, the possibility to access knowledge even if you live in the middle of the world thanks to that smartphone, and you can create a better life for you and your family.

You know what I mean? So it's an interesting contradiction, but the two things are not necessarily conflicting.

Got it. So I'm gonna have rapid-fire questions for you and then we'll wrap up. So the brand doing the most interesting marketing right now, which is— which, which brand would you say?

Well, considering what we've been talking about, I love what Patagonia is doing.

Patagonia. Okay. Do you know anyone in Patagonia?

Yeah, I met some people, but not well.

The retail format that will be most transformed by AI in the next 5 5 years?

E-commerce. E-commerce. It would become A-commerce.

Agentic Commerce. Got it. The biggest lie in the marketing industry today?

You can create demand.

Physical retail is dying, evolving, or being reinvented? Evolving. Uh, the single Kotler insight that has most shaped your thinking?

Making people think— making things people want, not making people want things.

Marketing or innovation, if you had to choose Drucker's most important function, which one would that be? Marketing. Business book that has influenced you most, which was not co-authored by you. Sorry, you cannot pick your own book.

Well, the first marketing book I read, Marketing Management, the very first book from Kotler.

The concept that is most overused in business today?

Profit is king.

Profit is king. King.

Okay, so profit is not king as a consequence.

As a consequence.

Okay.

Okay. AI in marketing, the greatest opportunity, the greatest threat, or both?

Both.

The thing AI will never be able to do for a brand? Taste. Taste. The most overmanaged organization that you ever encountered?

The government, public sector.

Public sector. So chronically optimistic, is that a personality trait or a professional choice?

It was a personality trait, it became a personal choice and professional choice.

The company you most wish you've been part of building?

An Italian company called Olivetti. Which inspired the world, including Apple, at the very beginning of the computer era.

Okay. One marketing campaign from history you wanted to create?

There's this Pepsi campaign where a kid in front of a vending machine wants a Pepsi, but it's too high, so he buys a Coke instead, which is lower button. And then he buys another Coke. Then he puts the two cans, jumps on them, and buys the Pepsi.

Uh, complete this sentence: marketing would be better for humanity if we focused more on what people actually need, want, and desire. Need, want, and desire. It's a lot, a lot of things. Yeah, which is more important?

It's the same thing, right? It's like expressing what they wish for themselves, right? Then it can be a want, a need, or a desire.

Got it, got it, got it. So what is your, uh, like, if you, if you were to say you had learned something in the last 20 years, what is that one thing that you know now that you didn't know 20 years ago besides being a liar? That I made you realize yesterday.

Thank you for that. That's what friends are about, right? That's what friends are for. I learned that when our brain or our body gives us the input of, that's too much, stop. We're actually 70%, not 100% of our capacity. And this is because it's been developed to protect ourselves. So, you know, it's a lot. You can still push. So I didn't know this. I intuitively experienced that. But now that I know, I systematically push myself. So even when I'm super tired, I'm like, dude, you can do at least 10% more, come on. And I keep going, I keep pushing. I love that.

Very beautiful. Listen, like, I think, um, you're a wonderful guy and, uh, a very good friend. And I, I know that you're going to be super duper duper successful in life because of 1, your personality, 2, your energy, 3, your thought process, 4, your resourcefulness, 5, I think, like, you know, I think you have a genuinely good heart. And I'm excited to have spent the 90 minutes with you, and I got to learn so much about marketing. And I think there's going to be— probably we have to do another show. Let's do that, talking about like digital marketing.

Okay, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Thank you.

Absolutely.