Marketing 101

As part of the annual planning session with our company board of directors, I got to have dinner in Palo Alto with one of our board members, Carl Yankowski. Carl has an amazing marketing track record having been CEO at Palm, President of Reebok, President of Sony Electronics, #2 man next to John Scully at Pepsi, CMO of Memorex, etc., etc. He very graciously offered to spend time with me to give me advice on my marketing responsibilities at work. Carl spent 3 hours with me over dinner explaining critical aspects of marketing -- whether it applied to CPG, or Enterprise Software. I was fascinated to hear his stories about coming up with famous marketing campaigns like "GE Spacesaver appliances," "the Pepsi Challenge," "Is it live? or is it Memorex?", "Simply Palm."

To be honest, I have never ever considered myself to be a marketing type. I never went out of my way to pursue a career in marketing, never considered getting formally educated in marketing. The big irony in my life is that I've been so blessed with opportunities to learn about the field of marketing -- both in terms of the responsibilities I've been given at work, and also the remarkable people to which I've been given access.