The Friendship that Changed Marketing Forever How a 55-year friendship and intellectual partnership made marketing larger than life By Hal Conick 72 MArkETInG nEWS | JUNE 2017 MN June_2017__mm edits.indd 72 5/16/17 11:58 AM JUNE 2017 | MArkETInG nEWS 73 MN June_2017__mm edits.indd 73 5/16/17 11:58 AM Sidney Levy had become fascinated with marketing. A trained behavioral scientist, he suspected that branding went beyond soap, steel and candy bars. He’d been researching the social aspects of marketing since the 1940s and saw the field’s vast potential. In 1961, he began teaching marketing classes at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Levy’s first year at Kellogg was an exciting time for marketing, with a booming economy, booming consumerism and a baby boom in the years after WWII. The recently invented color TV was brought into living rooms across America, carrying with it hours of previously nonexistent In 1962, Kotler was recruited to economics under Nobel laureates such ad space. A large audience was not Kellogg and told by the school that as Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson only reachable but willing to be he could choose to teach either and Robert Solow. While Kotler reached; marketing and advertising economics or marketing. After a visit didn’t have a marketing background, became more important than ever with Levy and other members of the he—like Levy—did have a unique for big business. From 1950 to 1960, faculty, Kotler says his choice was viewpoint and a desire to refine and annual advertising expenditures in the clear: “I chose marketing.” expand the field. U.S. quadrupled from $1.3 billion to $6 “That was one of the attractive Fifty-five years after joining billion, according to The Advertising things in meeting the faculty Kellogg, Kotler is affectionately Age Encyclopedia of Advertising. and deciding whether to join known by marketers as the “father of It was also an exciting time for Northwestern: meeting Sid Levy,” modern marketing.” Over those five the Kellogg school, which was Kotler says. “Sid and I hit it off early. and a half decades, Kotler, Levy and transitioning from a traditional faculty He’s a very charming and interesting other faculty members at Kellogg and marketing program to a school man; an original mind, fresh insights studied, explained and thought that included scholars from outside into things.” about marketing in ways no one the field. One such scholar was an Kotler, like Levy, did not have a had before. “We actually wanted to economist named Philip Kotler. marketing degree. He had studied hire people who were not trained in 74 marketing news | JUNE 2017 MN June_2017__mm edits.indd 74 5/16/17 11:58 AM “Both Kotler and Levy had a profound influence on marketing as we know it today. Levy did pioneering things in the domain of branding, culture and the realm marketing,” Kotler says. “Not that it impact on the marketing industry of the symbolic. Had he not conquered was a prejudice. It was that we would reverberates, and their bond as lifelong this exciting territory early on, marketing go further if we had different social friends holds strong. would not exist today as a ‘social science sciences in our group.” That diversification of ideas spread Changing discipline,’ and most of us contemporary, throughout academia and, soon after, Marketing, culturally oriented marketing and consumer the marketing business world. Levy, Changing Society researchers wouldn’t even be here. who ran Kellogg’s doctoral program In the age of post-WWII explosive Kotler must be credited for having spending, marketing was a narrow established marketing as an MBA and field that focused on practice sans boardroom institution. He really ‘translated’ theory. Businesses spent money but marketing knowledge in ways that made didn’t know what kind of ROI they it accessible and desirable to a wide array were getting on campaigns or what of stakeholders and industries. He made went on in the mind of the customer, marketing resonant to engineers, tourism nor could they properly segment managers, city officials, political leaders customer bases. But for each of these issues, and media journalists. It could be argued it seemed Kotler and Levy had that Kotler is marketing’s best marketer.” an answer—or at least a series of —Markus Giesler, chair of the marketing edifying questions to ask. The duo department at York University’s Schulich brought unique concepts and ways School of Business and director of the Big of thinking to marketing, just as Design Lab Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky brought to behavioral economics. Take, for example, Kotler’s assertion that marketing is a branch of economics, a thought that likely behavior theory and mathematics.” drew some cross looks in the 1950s. His book Marketing Management Now, Kotler’s assertion is accepted [Analysis, Planning, and Control] was and practiced by academics and a big risk, he says, because all the work executives. “The field of economics is could have collapsed if professors Philip Kotler, becoming very rich because of what didn’t respond well. Sidney Levy and nancy Kotler in marketers have been studying for 100 Kotler was pleasantly surprised as Levy’s living room. years,” Kotler says. professors not only responded well to In his early years at Kellogg, his 1967 textbook, but many lauded Kotler spent a lot of time reading it as the best book on marketing they for 16 years, says the influence of extant marketing textbooks. They had read. It was adopted in classrooms Kellogg’s golden era stretched far were disappointing. Most books across the U.S., then the world. Fifty and wide: His first three student described what a salesman, wholesaler years later, the book remains in print graduates became the heads of or advertiser would do in a given and is in its 15th edition. marketing departments at the Sloan situation, but none were based on Levy was doing his own School of Management (Alvin Silk); data. None had analytical models. The intellectual heavy lifting. His the Haas School of Business (John books were anecdotal, dry and not landmark 1959 paper titled “Symbols Myers) and the Wharton School well-researched. for Sale” was the first to say that (Tom Robertson). Kotler’s textbooks “The whole idea of being analytical marketing goes beyond simply selling are used in universities across the and trying to get explanations of practical merchandise—it also sells world. More than 3 million copies a phenomenon rather than just symbols. Anyone with a pair of Nike have been sold, and they’ve been describing things descriptively sneakers or a Gucci bag likely knows translated into 20 languages. was in my mindset,” Kotler says. “I this now, but at the time Levy’s In 2017, the AMA turned 80, Kotler immediately said that we needed a concept was novel. Ever the social turned 86 and Levy turned 96. Though textbook in marketing which was scientist, Levy argued that marketers Kotler and Levy have not formally based on four foundations: economics, needed to consider the personal and worked together in two decades, their organizational theory, consumer social meanings behind what people JUNE 2017 | marketing news 75 MN June_2017__mm edits.indd 75 5/16/17 11:58 AM Photo proofs of Kotler, Levy and others from the 1984 and 1985 AMA Summer educators Conferences in Chicago and Washington, D.C. buy, the diversity of spending and Sid and used them as their own.” No “the recognition of modern goods matter, as Levy’s groundbreaking work as essentially psychological things on branding is in print for all to see. which are symbolic of personal While each man did important attributes and psychological goals,” as solo work, perhaps their most the paper says. formidable breakthroughs came “Quite independently of one another, Phil “This seems obvious if we grant the in tandem. In 1969, Levy and and Sid had as big an impact on marketing importance of symbols—but not all Kotler co-authored a paper in businessmen do, of course, and that the AMA’s Journal of Marketing thought as anyone else I know. What is also has accounted for many failures in titled “Broadening the Concept of unusual is that this impact is felt among sales,” Levy wrote. “Greater attention Marketing.” Levy and Kotler laid out both practitioners and academics. If that to consumers’ modes of thought will the idea that marketing was about isn’t special enough, we find that together, give marketing management and more than goods and services, it through their joint work on broadening the research increased vitality, and, in was about places, people and ideas. concept of marketing, they further shaped turn, add to its own practical and Instead of simply focusing on soap, how we even conceive of the field in the symbolic merits.” toothbrushes and televisions, they first place. … The atmosphere [at Kellogg] In addition to advancing the idea wanted to expand marketing to cover was special and made more special by of brand symbols and brand image, cities, ideas and policies, too. the ways in which everyone stimulated the Levy is credited by many with coining In 1969, the article was presented department’s intellectual goals.”— Gerald the term “brand.” Kotler says Levy at the AMA’s Summer Educators’ Zaltman, former Kellogg faculty member and first used the word at a conference Conference. “I regarded it as an where David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy assertion of the universal application current Joseph C. Wilson Professor Emeritus and Mather, “picked up” the word of marketing activities to all at Harvard Business School from him. “So Sid didn’t get credit for individuals and organizations,” Levy inventing that,” Kotler says.