• 0

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

Marketoonist is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne. Marketing cartoons, content marketing with a sense of humor, keynote speaking.

  • Campaigns
  • Speaking
  • About
  • Cartoons
  • Contact
  • Book
  • 0

reinventing the marketing 4Ps

March 21, 2021

Marketing 4Ps cartoon
  • Paid licensing options include high resolution download.
  • Presentation $40 Add to Cart
  • Newsletter or Website $125 Add to Cart
  • Corporate Blog/Sponsored Post $60 Add to Cart
  • Looking for other licensing options? click here
  • View Cart
TweetLinkedInFacebookEmail

There’s a constant tendency in the marketing community to throw out long-established marketing concepts in favor of something new.  

The classic “4Ps” (Product, Price, Promotion, Place) is often in the crosshairs, sometimes with new Ps like “Purpose”, “People”, “Process”, “Performance”, or “Personalization” thrown haphazardly into the marketing mix.

Mark Ritson recently mocked this behavior by launching a “Four P Regenerator” that randomly creates new jargon starting with the letter P so that every marketer can have their very own reinvented 4Ps.

In a recent MarketingWeek editorial, Mark shared the history of the 4Ps as a marketing tool invented by a PhD student named Jerry McCarthy in 1959.  Mark writes:

“Discovering that a marketing concept is 60 years old elicits one of two possible responses. For a well-trained marketer who knows McCarthy’s work and appreciates disciplinary rigour, six decades signals robustness and consistency. 

“But if you are a ‘modern marketer’ – low on disciplinary knowledge and unable to discern the constant evolution of tactics from the broader, unchanging nature of the marketing mission – 60 years is indicative of something that is surely out of date.”

The 4 Ps remains a simple but effective encapsulation of the levers of marketing, even as the marketing role has gotten more specialized over the years, often centered around the single “P” of Promotion.  

Your Ad Ignored Here
"If marketing kept a diary, this would be it."
- Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs
Order Now

Yet the marketing role has always had an element of “responsibility without authority” and so marketers have to learn to manage by influence.  Russell Parsons urged marketers a few years ago to reclaim all 4Ps.  As Russell put it,

“Leave marketers out of the decision making on price and you’re robbed of the insight, understanding and sensitivity to the customer’s needs. Take away their influence over place, and you risk decisions being made on the basis of cost at the expense of customer experience. Eradicate input on product and you get innovation for innovation’s sake.”

And in response to the rise of digital marketing, I like this observation from Mark Ritson:

“We do not need to change the four Ps because of digital. We need to understand that the constituent elements that make up the four Ps have changed – will continue to change – as time moves on.”

Or as Diageo CEO Ivan Menzes put it a few years ago: “It is not about doing ‘digital marketing’, it is about marketing effectively in a digital world.”

Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:

growth hackers - March 2014

  • Paid licensing options include high resolution download.
  • Presentation $40 Add to Cart
  • Newsletter or Website $125 Add to Cart
  • Corporate Blog/Sponsored Post $60 Add to Cart
  • Looking for other licensing options? click here
  • View Cart
Share
  • Share this Marketoon
  • TweetLinkedInFacebookEmail
| Read Post

long live marketing - December 2019

  • Paid licensing options include high resolution download.
  • Presentation $40 Add to Cart
  • Newsletter or Website $125 Add to Cart
  • Corporate Blog/Sponsored Post $60 Add to Cart
  • Looking for other licensing options? click here
  • View Cart
Share
  • Share this Marketoon
  • TweetLinkedInFacebookEmail
| Read Post

The Marketing Role and Owning the P&L - September 2017

  • Paid licensing options include high resolution download.
  • Presentation $40 Add to Cart
  • Newsletter or Website $125 Add to Cart
  • Corporate Blog/Sponsored Post $60 Add to Cart
  • Looking for other licensing options? click here
  • View Cart
Share
  • Share this Marketoon
  • TweetLinkedInFacebookEmail
| Read Post

marketing seat at the table - May 2015

  • Paid licensing options include high resolution download.
  • Presentation $40 Add to Cart
  • Newsletter or Website $125 Add to Cart
  • Corporate Blog/Sponsored Post $60 Add to Cart
  • Looking for other licensing options? click here
  • View Cart
Share
  • Share this Marketoon
  • TweetLinkedInFacebookEmail
| Read Post

Filed Under: marketing

  • Paid licensing options include high resolution download.
  • Presentation $40 Add to Cart
  • Newsletter or Website $125 Add to Cart
  • Corporate Blog/Sponsored Post $60 Add to Cart
  • Looking for other licensing options? click here
  • View Cart
Your Ad Ignored Here Book Image

15 years of Marketoonist compiled for your marketing pleasure.

Order Now

About Marketoonist

Marketoonist is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne a career marketer and cartoonist. Learn More...

Browse Blog Posts

Most Popular Cartoons Browse Categories

Marketoon Campaigns

contentmarketing

Content marketing with a sense of humor.

Learn More

Keynote Speaking

speakingworkshops

Insightful, funny, and visual keynote talks and workshops.

Book Tom to Speak

Search Blog Posts

Interested? Let’s Talk!

Footer Form - Let's Talk

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Marketoons

Browse Categories
Spacing Things Out

About Marketoonist

Tom Fishburne is the Founder and CEO of Marketoonist, a content marketing studio that helps businesses reach their audiences with cartoons.

© 2025 Marketoonist