I believe that marketing is the most accessible, universal language among cultures. Throughout my working life, this constant has proven itself over and over. This mug reminds of it.

Hear me out.

I first experienced bridging cultures using a simple marketing methodology in Peace Corps 1990 on the edge of the great Rift Valley. Besides teaching business education at a trade school, I coached rural small business owners in Kenya’s Nandi Hills on how to think about customers, competitors and channel partners using limited company assets. Delivered with respect, inquiry and appreciation, I was able to connect with business owners, help them solve some problems and light up their imaginations.

This simple marketing planning methodology built a permanent bridge between our cultures.  These rural business owners taught me that marketing is a universal language.

A few years later helping Philadelphia public housing residents start small businesses, this methodology helped residents see a sustainable path to self-employment. Through workshops and coaching, I explained the same marketing methodology appealing to residents’ experience as customers – and how they could use that to understand who customers are, how they behave and what customer attitudes are. Armed with that information, they could create competitive small businesses that deliver value to customers and creates resources for their families.

At the end of my work in one community, I was given a mug (pictured above) by a woman as a thank you for showing her how she could start her own catering business, create her own future and pass it on to her children. With tears in her eyes, she gave me this dollar store mug and told me she could now see a feasible path to her dream.

Once again, this simple marketing planning methodology translated to opportunity across cultures in our own nation.

Eventually, I ended up in a Fortune 100 company and learned that the same marketing planning methodology was effective in getting professionals (from doctors to engineers) on the same page, going in the same direction.

This mug is a constant reminder that marketing is a universal language across cultures that helps people dream, plan and achieve. It has been my life’s privilege to learn this from so many communities.