The 4 Ps

Yes, I know there are sometimes mentioned 5, 6, 7 and even more „P“ in marketing. But let´s still with 4 for this time.

Sometimes people ask me: "what makes your marketing job for an multinational company so interesting? You may hardly change what is dictated from the headquarters. You can maybe add something local to the promotion, but the rest is still outside your control."

Usually, this comes from people working for German or French companies, where the company culture USUALLY doesn´t allow much liberty. The US companies are other. Let make this as my first statement.

As my second point yes, the promotion is mostly where marketers are active and where the changes can be made. But why don´t state this for the rest as well?

The place – in our case the partners are the key to our success. Without healthy partner ecosystem with right motivation and up to date readiness about products and solution we cannot be succesful. And it this all company marketers are active in local or international level.
The product – we cannot influence it directly. But we are often asked for feedback or might participate in developing or testing teams at headquarters.
The price – yes, ther the specialy big deals there might be special price agreed or can decide whether or not to participate for retail price discount promo.
The promotion - this is, where we are most at home. We can decide either to adopt WW campaing, to adopt it with local changes or to create a new one. Of course, only after we decide the HQ marketers that it makes locally more sense.

Bottom line? Yes, we can more or less impact also the place, the product or the price. But what makes me happy even more is the fact, that if we create something interesting in promotion locally, it is often used also for foreign markets, where our company is present. What could be for marketing manager in multinational company more motivating?