Where Have All The Gurus Gone?

Every era has its torch-bearers who illuminate us with new and fundamental thinking in various disciplines.

- Shubhranshu Singh

Marketing and communications seems to have lost this defining characteristic of intellectual activity. It has been so for a few decades.

In the past one hundred years, business management, in all its forms, has formalized as a field of formal study and professional pursuit. It has almost managed to create a special class of business managers mostly armed with a formal MBA degree. The most externally focused in this class were the marketers. They shaped social norm and created magic. Throughout this period, the most exalted position has been that of an academic, professional, veteran or achiever who earned acknowledgement as a Guru.

The dictionary definition of one was “…an influential teacher or a popular expert”.

Synonymously, it was about being an authority, maestro, pundit, ustad.

These walls have had names enriched with a halo: FW Taylor, JK Galbraith, Elton Mayo, Abraham Maslow, Douglas McGregor, Peter Drucker, Rensis Likert, Theodore Levitt, etc.

Even when it came to reflections on society and how it is shaped by forces of change, several thinkers were able to enlarge the boundaries of the field. Susan Sontag, Gore Vidal, David Halberstam, Thorstein Veblen and Richard Hofstadter are names in mind.

As marketing and communications came into mainstream consciousness, several thinkers developed, defined, shaped and critiqued it. Ernest Dichter, Stanley Marcus, Coco Chanel, Vance Packard, David Ogilvy, Michael Sandel and Bill Bernbach all have left their signature on the theory and application of marketing despite being a very diverse set of individuals.