Every few weeks, I leave LinkedIn with the impression that marketing has finally been solved.
Read enough posts and you could believe there is only one school of marketing thought: Ehrenberg-Bass. It reminds me of the old story about the tourist who visits Paris, spends the entire weekend at the Eiffel Tower, flies home, and tells everyone he has “seen France.” The Eiffel Tower is remarkable. France is much bigger.
After working on more than 1,800 strategy projects and spending decades inside companies and business schools, I’ve never seen a marketing organization run on one theory.
I’ve seen Kotler in strategy. Aaker and Keller in brand management. Ries and Trout in positioning. Christensen in innovation. Kahneman in consumer behavior. Hanssens in measurement. And yes, Sharp and Ehrenberg-Bass in brand growth.
Marketing departments are more like old cities than master-planned developments. Every generation added another building. Some neighborhoods are older, some newer. Together they make the place work.
The real question isn’t “Which school is right?” It’s “Which problem are you trying to solve?”
If your challenge is growing penetration in a mature category, Ehrenberg-Bass is indispensable.
If you’re trying to create a new demand space, redefine a category, reshape willingness to pay, redesign a portfolio, or build a business that doesn’t yet exist, you’ll need a different set of ideas.
The best marketers don’t belong to a school. They know which playbook to pull off the shelf. That’s called management.