To practice marketing today, you must be a genius. The markets are unimaginably complex, customers demand more and more, and competition is relentless.

Marketing equips business executives with knowledge about the customer and creative thinking - in other words, with the ingredients that provide the coveted competitive advantage. However, it must also combine these with the analytical and commercial rigor that guide strategy, innovation, and profitable growth.

The genius in marketing lies in the ability to connect the outside with the inside, the markets with the company, the customers with the shareholders, creativity with analysis, promises with reality, today with tomorrow.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]