ABSTRACT
My invitation to speak at the Machiavelli seminar stimulated me to reread The Prince and to see how useful parallels between his advice to the Prince and some of my current concerns about the future of marketing could be made. I have dwelt on the following topics, drawn from Machiavelli’s chapter headings:
I How many are the kinds of marketing and in what modes they are acquired II Of mixed marketing III How marketing should be administered IV Of those who have acquired marketing power through crimes V Of civil society VI In what mode marketing should be measured VII Of those things for which marketing is to be praised or blamed VIII Of liberality and parsimony IX What a marketer should do to be held in esteem
Machiavelli offered me one challenge:
It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit from the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new.
