Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value.

My primary early interest was in marketing and my aim was to improve its theories, methods and tools. Early on I pressed companies to adopt a consumer orientation and to be in the value creation business. I didn't pay much attention to the social responsibilities of business until later. Now I am pressing companies to address the triple bottom line: people, the planet, and profits. I found that companies were too much into short term profit maximization and they needed to invest more in sustainability thinking.

There is much work to do to protect forests from over-timbering and oceans and lakes from over-fishing. We need to encourage and reward companies that create jobs to reduce the carbon footprints of offices and buildings and homes.

The key to branding, especially for smaller firms, is to focus on a limited number of issue areas and develop superb expertise in those areas.

The sales department isn’t the whole company, but the whole company better be the sales department.

Every company should work hard to obsolete its own product line - before its competitors do.

Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value.