Harvard Business School Associate Dean speaks on marketing and democracy

Held at Bathish Auditorium in West Hall, the lecture was titled "Greater Good: How Good Marketing Makes for Better Democracy," after the name of Quelch's latest book, which was published by Harvard Business Press in 2008.

The lecture, which drew a large audience led by President Peter Dorman, was organized by the Olayan School of Business, under the Salim Kheireddine/Al Mawarid Bank Lecture Series, which was started in 2003 and has featured many thought and business leaders, as OSB Dean George Najjar noted in his introductory welcome.

Presenting Quelch, Najjar described him as a long-time expert on Middle East business, who is "dedicated to international discourse."

Quelch, who is also the Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration, has focused his research on global business strategy and has authored dozens of articles and five books. He is also known for his innovative teaching style and pedagogy. Quelch has also chaired the Jeddah Economic Summit and continues to chair the Riyadh Competitiveness Forum.
Quelch provoked his audience by arguing that "marketing, in practice, is more democratic than democracy."

Naturally, some in the audience remained skeptical, questioning the ability of marketing to reach all segments of the population, even those with no access to technological tools, such as the internet, or television. Others expressed reservations about marketing's ability to promote values just as well as goods. Still others noted that the purpose of marketing is to differentiate the individual from the pack. It does not aim for integration or leveling the playing field, as democracy tries to do. Neither does it promote the collective good, they noted.

But Quelch shook up his audience with "an excellent exercise in intellectual debate," as Dean George Najjar put it, in his wrap-up of the lecture.

He argued that marketing focuses on increasing the market, not just the market share of a product. As a result, it uses positive advertising to reach more consumers, rather than beating the opponent through negative campaigns.

For instance, Quelch noted that Pepsi and Coke have no interest in pointing the flaws in each other, focusing their energies, instead, on increasing the population of carbonated beverage drinkers. "Otherwise, if they insist on criticizing each other, we would all turn to fruit juice," he said.

That's why there is a significant degree of evidence today that the marketplace is probably more democratic than the polling place, he said.

Highlighting the similarities between democracy and marketing, Quelch said: "Marketing delivers the same benefits to consumers that democracy delivers to citizens."

He noted that both provide information, choice, engagement, inclusion, exchange and consumption to individuals.

To those who argue that marketing is undermining democracy, Quelch responded that there are many other factors that are doing that, namely, privatization, population mobility and globalization, all of which are making the citizen feel less engaged with the nation-state or local authority.

Finally, Quelch noted that since the commercial sector has succeeded through marketing, it was time to use this tool for social change programs. He argued that Obama's campaign was an excellent example of a successful marketing plan, since it possessed a compelling biography, a positive vision, a consistent core message, a complementary line extension (VP Joseph Biden complemented that of Obama, whereas VP-nominee Sarah Palin proved to be a distraction from John McCain's campaign), innovation in communication, and a multi-pronged aggressive outreach campaign.