România: What is (y)our plan?

(Excerpt from the doctoral thesis “Visual identity sources for Romania’s country brand,” author Bogdan Brînzaș)

According to Peter Drucker, whose writings have contributed to modern corporations’ philosophical and practical underpinnings, “marketing is the basis of all business and is therefore critically important to all aspects of it.” About Drucker, Kotler said: “If I am the father of marketing, then Drucker is the grandfather.” Drucker “wrote that there are two just two essential functions for any business: ‘marketing and innovation.’ I frequently mention Peter Drucker because his influence in the shaping of modern corporations, in his triple capacity as a management consultant, educator and author, was overwhelming, being a much more complex author than Kotler, who focused only on the narrow speciality of marketing. Drucker, however, was also a leader in management education and is described by many as the founder of modern management. I made this analogy with business organizations because they, like a country, pursue profit for its shareholders; therefore, we can assimilate the citizens of that country with them. Continuing Drucker’s idea that of the two essential functions for any business: marketing and innovation, it can be stated, continuing the conclusions of the previous chapter (about the need for inclusive societies), that such an approach of the two functions can only exist in the presence and inside an inclusive organization (society). As we explained earlier, open access fosters new ideas, progress and overall performance.

“According to Drucker, there is only one valid purpose for a business: to create a customer. This is because, as Drucker wrote, the customer is the foundation of a business and keeps it in existence. Only he provides a job.” Cohen also notes, from Drucker’s teachings:
The five most important questions you will ever ask about your organization: (1) What is our mission? (2) Who is our customer? (3) What exactly does our customer value? (4) What are our results? (5) What is our plan?

In the current global economy, any organization that has a profit-making purpose – by extension and a country – conceives its policy, through which it defines and outlines its future development and evolution directions, together with the concrete ways of achieving it, an approach that must ensure a position as stable as possible on the market and above all permanent development. In a classic understanding of marketing, it is considered that the strategy must consider the selection of products or services to be offered, as well as the respective markets. The strategic approach, in general, involves a process of analysis, evaluation and planning of subsequent actions (tactics) drawn per unit of time and with substantial resources allocated. The benefits of the strategic approach result precisely from the concreteness of the drawn plans, the allocated resources and the measurability of the objectives. A very used phrase in the business and marketing environment, whose authorship is attributed to Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson), but in a different formulation and context, it says: “what gets measured gets done”.

A correct marketing strategy, associated with well-defined objectives, incorporates what is known – through previous analyzes – about how the respective “business” will be able to fit into the “market” and will develop the five main conditions necessary for a comprehensive strategy: product, price, market, promotion and people (human resource). Just like a business plan, your marketing strategy needs to be fluid, with the ability to be modified to meet improving results. It should be noted that the marketing strategy is an integral part of the business plan and differs from the marketing plan. The marketing plan is part of the strategy and explains in detail how the objectives will be achieved, unlike the strategy, which details the objectives.