Vote, vote, vote for Philip Kotler

Thirty years ago, Philip Kotler drafted the modern marketing constitution and most would agree that it has served the discipline well. A generation on from Kotler’s conceptual charter, however, our rainbow coalition is in a state of disarray. Marketing is doubted by its scholarly citizens, questioned by a standing army of consultants and challenged by increasingly anarchistic consumers who are voting with their pocketbooks. This paper employs Kotler’s political metaphor to posit that conceptual amendments are necessary and that the democratic principles of consumer sovereignty might not be the most appropriate constitutional framework for our postmodern marketing times. A dictatorship of the imagination is advocated. An ingenuity‐led insurrection is recommended. A confederacy of creativity is called for. And a retrospective secession is suggested.