Drucker on the Dial
Interviewees: Kevin Plank, Peter Drucker (Archived Appearance)
Interviewer: Phalana Tiller
Episode: Tackling the Market
Release Date: March 8, 2013
[00:00:00] BEGIN EPISODE
[00:00:54] BEGIN KEVIN PLANK INTERVIEW
P: [Introduction]...Kevin Plank, welcome to Drucker on the Dial.
[00:02:01] K: Hi there. Thank you for having me Phalana. Appreciate it.
P: Absolutely. So Kevin, you're this incredible businessman as I explained in our introduction, and you're kind of at the pinnacle of your game and things seem to be growing and just getting better, but I read a little bit about your earliest forays into entrepreneurship, which began while you were still a college student. You had this Valentine's Day rose delivery service I think it was.
K: Sure, sure.
P: Will you tell us a little bit about that point in your life as a young man, as a student, where you're building this business and deciding to be an entrepreneur? What was it that was driving you to be that savvy entrepreneur at such a young age?
[00:02:34] K: [unintelligible] Valentine Rose Delivery was the name of the company, and it was a marketing campaign that was based off of – it was probably closer to a rip off of the Calvin and Hobbs cartoons, which Calvin beating Hobbs over the head saying, “why didn't you buy me flowers for Valentine's Day?” So if there's any title I could carry on a business card or would look for in any individual, the first one would be problem solver, and the problem you have in college is you don't have much money, and if you're going to impress your sweetheart it was a 60 or 75 or 100 dollar option at the local florist. The solution was what if we could get more efficient flowers to college kids? So my freshman year I set up shop. I had a credit card machine coming in my dorm room at 18 years old, and I put up these Calvin and Hobbs fliers all over campus and said $25 rose delivery, and it was $25 for a plain white box. It was $30 for the gold box, and it was $40 for the vase. So we ended up trying to sell a hundred dozen. We sold out all one hundred dozen. It was my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, who helped me assemble the flowers. I had two guys helping me deliver, and there was a hundred dozen flowers delivered in a day, and we grossed – I guess it averaged a little more than $3,000.00. Now keep in mind these are the kind of flowers though at 25 cents a stem that basically you'd open up the box and there was a half life that was on these roses. It wasn't like a long half life. I mean like literally a half life. So anyway, but I had learned the lessons of that and with that of customer service, but from that I sort of say in jest, but I'm pretty proud of that business that I started my freshman year at a hundred dozen flowers and then went to – it was 250 dozen my sophomore year, 650 dozen my junior year, and then 1,186 dozen my senior year of college, and the only reason I remember that number is because I tried selling 1500 dozen, and I sat there and watched 314 dozen flowers die on me, which taught me two very important lessons. Number one, never deal with inventory that can die, and number two, make sure that anybody that you work with can count to 12, and believe me there's a story behind that. So when you're up for 3 days in a row trying to get this one date, February 14th, and have all the flowers delivered and you realize that some of the drivers didn't make it there because I'm hiring all my buddies from college and they're going “a lot of traffic. I don't think I can make it,” to something else happens, and you get a customer service calls or a guy calls up and says, “you guys sent my girlfriend yellow flowers and she dumped me because of it. I blame you.” And you're looking at this and you're going – you're up for three days straight and all of a sudden this guy is calling and telling you – you're going if she dumps you over yellow flowers you had problems long before you called us pal. So trust me, we've gotten much more sensitive to the customer service organization since then, but without question good lessons learned from [unintelligible] Valentine Rose Delivery.
P: So I get what you're saying about you don't want to be in business with inventory that dies and so you didn't stick with the flowers. You didn't go on to be the king of roses or something. What then shifted you into thinking about an athletic apparel company? I know you have a background as an athlete yourself, but what were you thinking about at that point that then gave birth to Under Armour?
[00:06:00] K: Well I contemplated the rose business to be honest with you. Actually my distributer – because going from a hundred dozen to upward of a thousand, the guy I was buying them from – I went to the University of Maryland, and I was living down in College Park, and then I moved and I was living in Georgetown, about three blocks from Georgetown University, and my flower supplier was actually from Baltimore, and he tried to get me to come work for him and I wasn't exactly highly recruited for jobs out of college either as an athlete or just a guy somebody wanted to work for you, which actually was fine with me because I knew all along I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to work for myself, and I'd always done it, but it wasn't dead set on move out of the flowers and move to Under Armour because I contemplated and said if it's the flower business I'd like to do something big, and in my heart I believe if it hadn't been Under Armour and I'd done flowers I'd like to think I would've done something like 1-800-FLOWERS or taking that to the next level. I was looking at this thing, this crab cake business called Maryland Crab cakes, which is where I'm from, and I think that the crab cake is easy and overpriced and sort of under served product a lot of times, and I figured I had a friend who had a crab house and I had an in with some of the distributers there, and I was about to sign a contract with a PGA where I was going to be the official crab cake on 8 stops of the PGA tour, and then I had Under Armour. So there were like 3 or 4 things I was contemplating, but obviously the most organic thing and the greatest synergy was with this idea of being able to take this thing that I'd loved my whole life about being an athlete and being able to take that to the next level. So timing worked out very, very well, and I tell you it wasn't an easy decision trying to figure out which one to go with, but now obviously it's much easier. I'm glad I made the decision that I did.
P: Sure. Peter Drucker was known for saying that the basic functions for a company were marketing, understanding your customer, and innovation. Right? Creating and delivering goods and services in ways that the customer truly values, and Under Armour is kind of at the sweet spot of that. You guys are known as being at the forefront of innovation with materials and design and your equipment and your products and really also making things that the customers truly value. How do you guys go about getting inside the customer experience and really understanding and knowing what the customer values?
[00:08:20] K: Well in the early days we were the customer, and so it was that simple – from myself to my first partner Kip Fulks who was an all American lacrosse player in Maryland and was playing pro lacrosse when he started, and again we had a relationship of convenience. What attracted Kip and I together was the fact that A, I thought he could take on the lacrosse market, which would be very beneficial, and also he lived close enough where he could ride his bike to my grandmother's road(?) house in Georgetown, and he'd do the whole thing for $180 bucks a week, and in addition he also had a great credit, which is very important. He used to basically take the company's finances and rotate them from credit card to credit card, which [unintelligible] through his credit when frankly I already had not done such a good job with my credit in the early days. But understanding that customer, Kip was an athlete. The other partner [unintelligible] was a guy named Ryan Wood who I had gone to prep school with and was a football player who played for Arizona State and would play for the Dallas Cowboys for a little while. So we saw it as very niche sort of market of like let's go out after football players. Let's go after lacrosse players. Let's go after baseball players, and they were basically guys that we knew. What got me into the company as much as a great product was between the high school that I went to, St. John's College High School in Washington D.C., and before I went to the University of Maryland I went to a prep school, which was called Fork Union Military Academy, and then from the University of Maryland I was graduating from school. We had nine guys from my high school team went on to play Division 1, four of which went on to play in the NFL. My prep school team, we had 23 guys on my prep school team signed Division 1 scholarships, 13 of which were drafted into the NFL, and then my college team at the University of Maryland there were 25 guys who were former Maryland players playing in the NFL. So I knew close to 50, 60 guys at 22, 23 years old getting out of school playing in the NFL, making all this money, having all this celebrity, and instead of being the obnoxious 3rd cousin calling them and saying let me borrow $500 – I've got this business idea, I simply sent them two shirts, and the first shirt I said if you like it wear it and if you really like it give one to the guy in the locker next to you, and that was really sort of the genesis of what got our product out there authentically placed, and then I really just let my consumer start telling me. “I love this shirt. It's awesome for the summer, but I play for the Atlanta Falcons and we played a Super Dome and my arms were always getting cut up and wearing a heavyweight shirt – can you make this thing in long sleeve?” And it was looking at the guy and going well of course we can make it in long sleeve. How many? What color? And when do you need them? With no history of doing other than just the customer saying, “this is great. This is perfect for warm weather, but this is Arizona State,” and Jake Plummer who's a quarterback out there called and said and the equipment manager said, “the guys love your product for the warm weather. It's great here in the desert, but our last game of the year is against Oregon State,” and this was 1996, and Arizona State was undefeated that year and ended up playing in the Rose Bowl and was playing in the national championship, lost to Ohio State that year, but were the genesis of what's now called our “cold year” product is because I sent these guys shirts out there, and they said do you make any for cold weather? And I'm thinking of course we make something for cold weather. How many? What color? And when do you need them? And of the product that I sent out there, I remember watching it when they played Oregon State, and we used to have three product lines – one called Cold Gear, one called Heat Gear, and this one in the middle called All Season Gear. So when I sent the product to the team I remember watching the game very anxiously as how is the product going to do? Every guy on the team was wearing this long sleeve cold weather product that they had on their body and finished the game. Arizona State wins. I'm waiting anxiously for a call from the equipment manager on Monday. How did the guys like the shirts? What did you think? And he comes back and he says, “Kev, the guys love the products, but it ended up being in the high twenties and they said the shirts didn't keep them warm enough,” and I'm sort of sitting there in grandma's basement thinking on my feet and going well of course they didn't keep them warm enough. That was my Off Season Gear product. You want my Cold Gear product. I can send you that next week and knowing full well they didn't have anymore cold weather games, and he's going, “I don't know if we'll need it.” Then I'm thinking to myself ok I need to find a better product for cold weather. So I've got this DNA, this compression, this synthetic shirt and finding ways to solve and satisfy for the consumer.
P: Yeah. It sounds like you were also co-designing in a way with your consumer . In real time you're getting this feedback about what's working, what's not working, what do they need for this weather, adjusting your plans and innovating for new products as a result of that.
[00:13:05] K: Yeah, I mean no question. Before Under Armour athletes didn't have a choice. The options were you could wear a short sleeve cotton t-shirt in the summer and a long sleeve cotton t-shirt in the winter. It's one of those ideas that people look at and say it's so simple, it's so easy, and especially now - there was no such thing as base layer. There's no such thing as performance undergarments. It was just you would literally have a short sleeved cotton t-shirt in the summer and a long sleeved cotton t in the winter, and it sends a message that I have for your audience or anybody that hears our story. Hopefully it's oh my gosh – this Maryland football player came up with this idea and did this? And I'm kind of looking and going yeah! So what's your excuse? Like get out there and do it. Go publish. Get out of the attic. Get out of the basement. Take your business, and it can happen. It didn't start with a tremendous amount of capital, and it just started with a good idea and understanding your customer and a terrific product.
P: Yeah. Clearly you're athletic background informed the services and the products you were developing and continuing to develop, but do you think it informs the way that you lead and manage? Do you approach your teams, they're at work, and the industry, the field itself from some sort of an athlete's mind?
[00:14:12] K: No question. I mean we run our company much like a team, and I've used in the past the analogy that sales and marketing are like offense. Manufacturing and distribution are like defense. Finance and IT are like special teams and sort of this very American view of here's how a team is on the field and how it operates, but instead of like American football I'd say we're much more like global or European football where it's not one team on the field at the same time. It's everybody on the field at the same time, and the teams that are going to win are the ones who communicate the best, and so as you beget larger as an organization, it was easy when it was myself and Kip in the road(?) house in Georgetown, but we've got 5,000 going north to 6,000 employees this year and making sure that you have the DNA in place that people understand what's your mission? What's your vision? What's your ethos? What your culture is, and you have to communicate that over and over and over again, and our think our mission statement is to make all athletes better through passion, design, and relentless pursuit of innovation and knowing what that is. Our vision is to empower athletes everywhere. Plain and simple. Without Under Armour, yeah you'll survive. You can get to here, which is [unintelligible]. It's level 7, but with Under Armour you can get to level 8 or maybe it's just level like 7.1 or 7.2, but one thing is you sure is that you're certainly better with this than without us, and that's almost – that's the mentality. That's what brand is. Brand makes you feel whether it's placebo or whether it's reality. The fact is there's a lot that goes into our products behind just someone thinking oh it's just a mark on it, because we spend a heck of a lot of time thinking about is that the perfect fabric? We spent a heck of a lot of time thinking is that the perfect place for that seam to go. Is that the perfect size or gage of zipper that's supposed to go on that jacket or is it too much or too little? It's that kind of thinking that goes into that's what we are. We're supposed to be the thought leaders of all thing – that's women's apparel, accessories and footwear. Period, full stop. P: Yeah. Peter Drucker also talked about this list of 7 areas of opportunity for innovation, and one of those areas was the area of demographics. How are you thinking about the demographics and the changing characteristics of your current customer base and/or your future customers or your non customers? What sorts of things are you seeing out there and are you planning or are you even worried about?
[00:16:32] K: Yeah well I'm getting older, so it's getting harder to be the person who – you're making product for you or the customer. So that continues to change and evolve, but I think as we broaden the aperture of who Under Armour is right for, which frankly began with college football players and then moved to – there are a couple of the athletes of the first 7 shirts I passed out at the University of Maryland. One of the athletes on the football team also played baseball. Another one of the athletes also played lacrosse, and very quickly I had guys coming to me and said, “hey the other guys on my lacrosse team would like one,” and the other guy, “hey one of the guys on the lacrosse team, his girlfriend, she plays on the girls' team and they saw them and they're wondering if they could get them,” and it was that sort of moment when I realized that this was an idea that wasn't just a singular product idea, but it was more of a concept and it was more than just a t-shirt for football players. That's where opening up the idea of how big can this idea be of basically changing the view of apparel into saying this is not just a covering for my body or something that I use to hold my number on so you know which player I am on the field but literally a piece of equipment that can make me better, and that's something we've carried into every product and every product category we've gone into and continues to drive us today.
P: Do you see yourselves paying attention to this shift then? Say for example if you're broadening your aperture, are there more people you're going to be interested in reaching who aren't necessarily performance athletes, but it's a different kind of equipment I their life?
[00:18:00] K: Yeah, my gosh of course. I mean Under Armour should serve as an inspiration for every person out there – is that making athletes better is a pretty broad statement when you consider how can you define someone as not being an athlete despite what they think. Our definition is inclusive of everyone, but let's be realistic for a second as well – is that we've got healthcare issue in this country that we need to deal with, and the fattening of America is not going to help or serve anyone, and so when you look at our obesity issue, when you look at our diabetes issues and these problems, which are just horrific, and saying what's the responsibility where we're having trouble covering our tax bill as a country? And frankly it's not just a US problem. It's bigger than that, but just leave it here for a second and saying the role that we can all play keeping ourselves healthy instead of waiting and building larger healthcare systems, proactive medicine where we're empowering and incentivizing(?) the people to stay healthy and to stay fit and not have themselves breaking down and having these health issues, and so the role that sports can play is bigger than – and brands can play – is much bigger than we want you to buy our sneakers – is that it can be anyone. When someone walks into an Under Armour store, the question is not how may we help you? Or what can we do for you today? The question is what do you want to be? And what do you want to [unintelligible] others? Do you want to play top(?)? Do you want to play high school? Varsity? Do you want to play college sports? Do you just want to lose 15 pounds? And like that should be it. It's like getting your uniform, and it feels like I've got my equipment now. I've got the tools that I need in order to accomplish the task at hand, again, but it's also just about getting out and being active and moving. We just launched a new product or are launching it in the next few weeks here called Armour 39, which is our new biometric measuring device, which is it's like a heart rate monitor, but it does a lot more. Imagine where so often we judge sort of the quality of our exercise or our workout by the size of the sweat stain in our grey t-shirt on like how did we do? And you're going this is a product that measures your heart rate. It measures your breathing rate. It's got accelerometry in it. It tells you body position. It's got these incredible devices, and at the end of it it gives you this thing called the will power score, and it just means that when I'm on a treadmill or elliptical machine, I get on and engage and it tells me how many calories I burn, how long I was on it, what my heart rate was, and then I'm off of it, and if I leave the gym that's all I know, but the ability to – if you have a problem the first thing you need to do is identify the problem of course, but then you need to measure it, and then once you measure it we can start putting some thoughts(?) and dynamics to it and announcing how are we going to solve this problem. So Armour 39 is the first step in that. It's a measurement device, a true measurement device, for the athlete that measures probably one thing that's never been done before is what is your will power?
P: It essentially conglomerates all those numbers, all those figures, all those measures and basically spits out a value that's assigned to like how much did you stick with it or how much were you willing to do the work? Which probably taps into the emotion around fitness.
[00:21:00] K: Absolutely. It makes it easy and says I can't believe I put on 3 pounds this month and going well it's got this app. It uploads, goes right from our strap directly into your phone and tells you as you look back on a daily, weekly, monthly, annual basis how much did I work out this year? Why did I put on 8 pounds this year? What happened? And we're not trying to obsess people, but we're certainly trying to make people in saying like we all have an obligation to stay fit. It's our obligation not to be burdens for our children either, that we're healthy and we lead good active lives, and I understand that there's people that have issues, and those are the ones that we do need to be able to help, but the broader case of the fact that Americans are 30, 40% bigger than some of our neighbors and other countries it's not acceptable, and whether it's some of the fast foods or the sodas or the other things, but fitness and exercise can play a big role in that. If people aren't going to stop going to McDonald's, and I'm not advocating that they do, I just advocate that they balance that with balanced fitness regime. P: Sure. I've got one last question for you Kevin....What do you want to be remembered for?
[00:22:13] K: I don't want to be remembered for an athletic shirt. I'd like to build a great brand, and frankly I don't know how this ends, which means it has us getting up and going to work everyday and pushing that, but I'd like it to be more than convincing someone to buy my shoe because athlete X wears it and it's really expensive and I can make a great margin on it versus it's a shoe that really inspires a kid. If Under Armour should be anything it should – we're a powerful brand, but we should be an empowering brand too – is that I'd love for people – that idea of what do you want to be, of someone walking into a store and being like “I didn't feel like working out today, but I'm wearing my magic shoes. I've got my magic shirt on.” If I'm going to be a part of anything I want our brand to be that. I want our brand to be that inspirational whether it's an athlete we signed or a team that we're affiliated or a league we're affiliated with or a product that we make, that it gives you that [unintelligible] to want to get up and want to go do something important yourself.
P: Thank you very much for joining us on Drucker on the Dial Kevin. I really appreciate you making the time.
[00:23:07] END KEVIN PLANK INTERVIEW
[00:23:08 – 00:28:41] RICK WARTZMAN
[00:28:42] BEGIN PETER DRUCKER ARCHIVED APPEARANCE
P: [Introduction]...
[00:29:20] PD: The internet online shifts information to the customer. Yesterday I got a message from Europe about some institution there which I had never heard in an obscure part of Switzerland, and I'm not fast, and it took me about 8 minutes on the internet to get the information about it where without the internet I probably never would've gotten it. Ok I would've sent an email or a fax to you and asked for it, but I now have control of information, but also on the internet – the internet is a local market. One of the great advances in the theory and practice of marketing over the last 30 or 40 years is that we have learned to define what a market is, and those of you who have worked in that field know that it's not an easy thing to do, and it's a very critical thing to do and the answer to the question what is our market is a make or break answer, and suddenly the internet is no longer adequate. With the internet everything has become a local market. In most cases you don't even know where the request or the order or the competition comes from, but basically there is no distance on the internet, and so everything is a local market, and you have therefore very new challenges. Now let us go back to what the purpose of marketing is, and there are two answers to it and you need both. The old answer, let me say the term itself in its present meaning is just about 50 years old. It's been around much longer, but 50 years ago two people quite independent of each other but almost within a few week of each other talked of marketing the way we now do - one was Ted Levitt at the Harvard Business School and I was the other one - as marketing as the way to look at the institution from the end product, which is the customer. That is marketing. It is also a bag of techniques, and you need both, and so the question what is our market? It's not an easy one. It's a critical one. And we have learned how to, well more or less, how to look at it and how to think about it, and for 99.9% of all organizations their market is a local market or has been. That in the extreme case totally local to harsh riddle(?). What is the internet? Basically it is a local market even though the producer may be miles away. Let me give you one simple example. Maybe the fastest growing business just now is Amazon and Continental Europe, selling English language books so far. The are growing at the rate of 400% in Germany. So our [unintelligible] my German Publisher, the customers are local, and they call a local number, and the book is shipped from, in the case of Europe, from England. Is Amazon a local business or what? How does it react especially if it moves as it's about to move into German language books. The answer is the internet is always local, and so well a good man's industries are protected from this. Restaurants will have no comp – a restaurant here in Claremont has no competition in Chicago or vice versa, but for most business this sense is disappearing. The internet is a local market, and so you have new questions which are marketing questions. The first question is for this business, for this institution of ours, is the internet a distribution channel? It's as I told you the one company I know that has tackled this question, and by the way I understand fought over it pretty bitterly was GM, and it came to the conclusion the internet is just a distribution channel basically. In other words – not even that. The internet is basically an advertising channel for us, and we get the order over the internet. It is then delivered by a dealer in the neighborhood. Well considering that automobiles are not particularly easy to ship around, that's an intelligent answer, but on the other hand you have things that are very movable – books. The other Amazon answer is that the internet is a market and increasingly organizations will have to ask that question. Do we look online or the internet as a distribution channel, as a market, as a separate business or will it force us to change our theory of the business all together, which is what do we get paid for? And these are marketing questions, and we don't know the answer yet. So it is predictable that within the next 10 years you will see again a major change in what we mean by marketing. [00:35:38] As I told you not so long ago it meant techniques to support selling. It still means that, and it will continue to mean that. Then now gradually marketing has come to mean the definition of the business as seen from the customer, and the customer's want will change from the original definition we make, and the customer buys what we make, which is still the way most businesses look at themselves and selling. Two, we make what the customer buys, which is a marketing definition, and our definition of the business is the satisfaction of the customer want. That is what we preach in our marketing classes. Very few businesses, yet they all preach it, but very few practice it. More still believe that we make it and then we sell it, and we're barely at the point where we start out with what the customer is buying. What is the customer's want? And that is what we satisfy. And we now have to go to – we don't know yet how to answer it. At least I don't. I don't know anybody who has answered the question what is the market? The market is no longer defined in terms of our product or in terms of what the customer wants is increasingly going to be defined in terms of information, and these are the big challenges, and it is predictable that within at most 10 years or so most institutions, even those that are not directly affected by online and the internet, and let me say the local restaurants are not, the local hospital is not, of most of our – I think we have 2800 colleges in this country, most of them are not affected. Most of them are completely local, and yet they will be affect – they're already being affected. We will have to ask again the fundamental question about our business and the fundamental question about what is it we are trying to market, not to sell. That's easy - but to market. Marketing is basically information and not product or service, and what is it? And so it is I think predictable, certain almost, that within a few years almost every institution except the extremely local ones will have to redefine itself where the internet is a local market, and we have to think through not only how we project into this market but how we measure, how we judge our performance in that market. So far let me say most institutions no matter what they say still are managed on the basis of the customer. We make it, the customer buys it. Most of them talk marketing. Very few practice it. Very few start out with what does the customer buy? What is satisfaction for the customer? Even fewer start out with what the right people did 50 years ago with how do we affect economic structure so that we don't have to sell the product. It's already bought. All we have to do is install it or buy it, and the biggest question of them all, and don't ask me to try to answer it because I don't think anybody can, is how do we position ourselves in that new market in which everything is local, in which there is no such thing as distance? [00:40:04] Do we focus on – on what wants do we focus? And as I said I don't know the answer. All I know is that marketing is about to change again and change from defining the business as satisfying the wants of a customer to defining the business in terms of [unintelligible] information. What is it that the customer or rather that what one should see, hear, perceive in that information market that is the internet? 30 years ago or maybe 50, maybe even more, when the idea first came up that the customer never buys what the maker produces. I told you the Rolls Royce was still 1906. The last major product that was started out with the idea that we make the best product. [unintelligible] how do you 10 years later, already 20 years later, was we are not selling a car [unintelligible] between you and me, but please don't quote me to General Motors. The Caddy is no better than the Chevy. In fact, in anthropolic tests the Chevy has done better than the Caddy for 50 years. Nobody buys a Caddy for transportation. You buy it for status, and so this was a great transformation for the '30s. What is the real want a product or service satisfies or differentiates it. Now I think the question is what is the perception of a market that in which everything is local? And where in other words for most products and services even though you are geographically defined, you have to be defined in terms of well what is it? Here are the Claremont colleges with about 1/3 of their students foreign students, very successful, and while we are geographically here from the point of view from the Japanese or Taiwanese we are basically the first American colleges, prestige colleges, accessible to that student from across the Pacific, and now the Claremont College will have to answer the question what are their wants? What are the perceptions? What are the marketing tools to reach those, to satisfy the perceptions and wants of these potential students so that they'll become customers on the internet? And that we don't know the answer for yet. Let me say that we are at the next stage in marketing. So far marketing has basically been defining the business as from what the customer satisfaction buys. Now it will increasingly be defining the business from what I would say the internet is too narrow, from a market that is world wide in being local. What are its values, its wants, its perceptions? And this I think is a big marketing question. It is not a question of techniques. We have a lot of good techniques. It is a matter of understanding that the internet creates, converts everything into a local market. There is no distance anymore. I know – I hope you are not satisfied with what I've said, because I am not. I told you. I told you that I see that questions are ahead of us, which we have never asked, and it will be I don't know how long before we can answer them, but I am not sure that the internet and online changes as many things as you hear about. In many ways it is another distribution channel or another information channel and not more than that, but when it comes to marketing I think it changes what we mean by a business, an institution, because it makes every market – it makes the world a local market in terms of information, in terms of values and wants, and so we still talk about defining a business from what the customer buys when he wants our product. I think we may have to learn to define our business from what the information perception of that local market that is the entire – basically everybody who has access. That means everybody, and I know this is not satisfactory, but the internet converts everything I said into local market, and so we will have to learn to redefine the business, even local ones in terms of that market that knows no distances and cannot be defined in terms of geography. This is I know very unsatisfactory. At least I am very unsatisfied with it, but I think it [unintelligible] a fundamental change ahead of us not just in marketing, in defining the institution and defining markets and businesses, and if you ask me questions I hope you will allow me to say if I'm still alive in 10 years and answer it, but not till then.
[00:46:28] END PETER ARCHIVED APPEARANCE
P: [Outro]....
[00:46:56] END EPISODE
