(From left) Hermawan, Indonesian Ambassador Hermono, Tahira Group director Rahman Tamin, CEO Vincent Tan and managing director Zeny Azuan at the event to mark the collaboration between MarkPlus and Tahira. The ceremony was witnessed by Hermono.
Renowned marketing guru Hermawan Kartajaya is a leading force in the championing of a “thinking beyond the box” Entrepreneurial Marketing ecosystem.
He is the first Indonesian to enter the international league in marketing and his inspirational self-made success story is truly something to learn from.
He is a rare example of a practitioner and thinker of strategic business concepts. His expertise has paved the way for marketing excellence in a highly competitive industry.
His art of marketing, The 4C Model (Change-Customer-Competitor-Company) and The PDB Triangle (Positioning-Differentiation-Branding) is simple and practical.
The former is a tool to analyse the business environment, both external and internal, while the latter describes the basic framework of marketing on how to make your brand stand out.
Hermawan, who is the founder of Asean’s leading marketing consulting firm MarkPlus Inc, will further spread his successful marketing strategies in South-East Asia in collaboration with Tahira Group.
Also a best-selling author, acclaimed public speaker and lecturer as well as co-founder of World Marketing Forum and chairman of Asia Marketing Federation (AMF), he was in Kuala Lumpur recently to receive his Professor of Practice conferred by Asia eUniversity (AeU).
“As a marketing professional, this accolade has provided a new energy for MarkPlus Institute to return to Malaysia with the Tahira Group. And as a marketing guru, it is a momentum to introduce more Entrepreneurial Marketing in Asean, Asia and the world,” he enthused.
He had previously served as Adjunct Professor at Universiti Putra Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman University College and AeU. He also received a Professorship from the School of Compania in South Korea.
Dubbed by UK’s Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of the 50 gurus who have shaped the future of marketing, Hermawan is the current chairman of ACSB (Asia Council for Small Business).
He has co-written nine international books with Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing. Their latest book Marketing 5.0 was translated into 22 languages and selected as a 2021 Best Business Book by Soundview, Inc, while their upcoming publication Entrepreneurial Marketing will be launched in March 2023.
China and South Korea publishers have also signed local copyright agreements to launch the book.
“Entrepreneurial Marketing is all the more relevant in this post-pandemic era because of the new dichotomy between startups and conventional companies.
“We need a winning concept that combines the advantages of both the old and new. My ‘Entrepreneurial Marketing’ concept covers the convergence between entrepreneurship and marketing within organisations, which are able to achieve optimal performance by converging technology with humanity,” he explained.
“This paradigm means that digital technology must be able to increase a company’s productivity but not at the expense of the people’s creativity,” he said.
Tahira Group chief executive officer Vincent Tan said their collaboration with MarkPlus was to champion Marketing 5.0 and Entrepreneurial Marketing as a new frontier towards Sustainable Development Goals in seven industries of renewable energy, fintech, agriculture, logistics and aviation, manufacturing, education and hospitality.
“Tahira will be the strategic partner to bridge industry players through knowledge and programme development in South-East Asia. This is an opportunity for us to emerge and expand marketing competencies in the region through international symposiums, seminars and training programmes for C-level executives.
“We will engage participants with the Asean spirit for knowledge exchange, not only limited to soft skill, but also a cross culture exchange on the humanitarian sentiment and market analytics,” he elaborated.
The partnership is very much aligned to the Group’s vision of strengthening and connecting Asia’s diverse economy through social and economic strategies catering to the unique Asian markets, particularly China and South-East Asian nations.
Tahira has brought stakeholders together in a community of creative and innovative businesses spanning manufacturing, education, finance, logistics technology, energy solutions and social enterprise.
