P&G and Unilever developed marketeers; whom will Google develop?
“How do you do it”, people asked? How did we find those people in the ’90s, some of whom are highly respected in the marketing world today? And if I am honest, I didn’t have a clear answer then, and looking back, I cannot clearly recall now, how we did it then.
I didn’t have a plan.
I mean that I didn’t have a business plan. I had no financial plan, cash flow or P&L forecasts. Looking back, I am even more shocked that despite all my training, I had given little thought to the “brand” I was creating, no competitor analysis, no SWOT analysis. Of course for several months I was not even legally trading; yet nobody cared, least of all the clients. They wanted me to find them people. Fast. Like, today. And to my surprise, when I did , they all paid the fees.
Late November, 1992. Prague had been cold throughout my visit, but at the airport, built on high ground, there was another weather problem: fog. And the airport had no modern fog landing equipment. All flights were suspended, and in the terminal building it was chaos. I had been visiting privately, staying in a rented room near Wenceslas Square. The queue for the phone boxes was huge, and anyway even if I managed to call the owner, we spoke not a word of each other’s language. I passed by the Avis car hire desk, and something about the young lady there made me act on impulse.
