ABSTRACT
Some years ago, a famous British marketing guru used to travel around the country entertaining the hitherto unenlightened with a presentation on the socalled oxymorons of marketing. After extracting a few cheap laughs with the familiar classics of the genre-‘military intelligence’, ‘postal service’, ‘airline food’ or, doubtless if he were doing it today, ‘royal family’–he would then explain to the audience that apparent contradictions in terms like ‘marketing planning’, ‘marketing strategy’ and ‘marketing philosophy’, were not only perfectly logical and ultimately attainable, but nothing less than the very secret of long-term success in business. True, he never addressed that most contradictory oxymoron of all-‘British marketing guru’–yet he did at least manage to persuade his listeners to reflect momentarily on the importance of adopting a marketing orientation.
