Professor of Promotion
Jim Petzing started his seminar on the essentials of promoting two years ago because, he says, he enjoys teaching. Moreover, Petzing saw a course as a way to build business leads for his agency, Chicago-based The Synergy Group, which merged last year with Norwalk, CT, shop Colangelo Marketing to become Colangelo Synergy.
Petzing’s program, which he developed and presents, is thriving today partly because he guessed right about the demand for teaching help in promotional basics. Agency and client-side people lack knowledge in a discipline that is learned mostly on the job, and still only cursorily taught in college marketing courses, says Colangelo Synergy’s chief operating officer.
Marketing students might learn how to launch a new product, what brand equity is, and how to find a target audience, but they don’t get into promotion fundamentals, like setting measurable objectives and budgeting, says Petzing, whose resume includes stints at General Foods, NestlA, and Citicorp.
Many of those who pay their $995 to attend the two-day Promotional Planning for Professionals course are client-siders with jobs in finance, sales, and operations who are being introduced to the discipline.
“Promotion is viewed as a place where you can get a broad education and a cross-fertilization experience,” says Petzing. In any event, “promotional planning is a process that very few companies follow well,” he notes.
In the case of Armonk, NY-based IBM, brand managers simply needed help with promotional fundamentals. Petzing is training IBM product managers from divisions here and abroad in one of the half-dozen custom seminars he puts on for client companies each year.
Joe Verdone, IBM program director for worldwide promotions, liked what he saw when he monitored one of Petzing’s sessions earlier this year. “We don’t have people with packaged-goods planning skills, and we need to develop this. We’re linear thinkers here. He does a good job of describing a logical process, from finding the objective to developing the strategy and tactics,” says Verdone.
Petzing joined General Foods out of Cornell University in 1982.
After working in the promo group on the Gaines Burgers and Top Choice dog-food brands, he moved to NestlA in 1984 to focus on candy and ice cream, but returned to General Foods two years later as category promotion manager on Post cereals.
“I feel very fortunate that I got excellent training in promotion planning when I started. Working at General Foods at that time was like getting your MBA at Harvard in promotion.”
To date, more than 125 people have enrolled for the general courses held monthly, and another 125 for custom courses for companies including Helene Curtis, Black Entertainment Television, and Nabisco. On the second day, attendees solve a marketing challenge using the knowledge gained the first day in what Petzing calls “a very interactive” approach.
Petzing hopes his teaching sideline will “help raise the bar for us as professionals. The industry has never received the credit and recognition it deserves.”
In what areas do students need the most help? “Most people have trouble identifying the difference between a promotional objective, strategy, and tactic, and writing good, solid objectives and strategies.”
That sounds like a subject worth learning about.
