Level 5 Marketing with Peter Drumond

In our Middle East International Study Tour class, Peter Drummond from Level 5 came in to discuss how marketing affects strategy, which is particularly cructial to how we will conduct our market entry strategy projects for bringing companies into the Middle East.

I was fortunate enough to ask him a question relating to how to focus our approach in bringing our company into Dubai. He focused on the emotional aspects of our company's product, which was particularly relevent and discussed Cirque de Soleil (our second choice) as an example.

He talked about Second Cup, and how the core value of similar companies was items such as "sensory experiences", "another place" (similar to what we discussed in the SBUX case). An interesting point was that each of these points never used the word "coffee" in them. And building from this base, there was some importance of understanding his framework of table stakes, key drivers, limitations of operations and hidden value.

With his background, he emphasized the value of intangible assets and how the emotional connections that individuals have can drive additional value add beyond standard economic value creation (the lesson we are learning in Managing Customer Value this term).