Early Friday morning is probably not the most liked time among students for a lecture. But it’s not every day that you have the chance to hear Svend Hollensen speak about creating value, supply chain management, upstream centralization, lingerie models and more topics that are important in global marketing.
Lingerie and sports drinks
The Danish professor, whose books are sold from Russia to India to Latin America, shows value chain models and describes his view on global and glocal marketing. He uses well known companies to illustrate the various chain models that are in use nowadays. From lingeriecompany Triumph to sportsdrink Irn Bru. ‘For the Russian market Irn Bru works together with Pepsi. Pepsi manufactures Irn Bru for the Russian market and uses the brand to shut out their competitor Coca-Cola. If supermarkets put Irn Bru on the shelf, they have less space for Coca-Cola. That way Pepsi tries to “shut” them out’, Hollensen explains.
He really admires the chain models H&M and Ikea use. ‘If you compare H&M with Zara you see that they sell less, yet make more profit. They do this by keeping a less complicates chain model. Zara has eight different brand stores whereas H&M only has one.’
Black list
During his lecture Hollensen uses corporate images and adds for instance from lingeriemodels to illustrate the marketing campaigns. ‘Therefore my book is put on the black list in Iran. The authorities don’t want their students to read about Triumph and vodka.’ But a lecturer of the Teheran University got his hands on one of Hollensen’s titles. ‘Apparently he showed it to his students because he thought it was interesting. Now my book is popular underground literature among Iranian business students.’
In January Hollensen plans to travel to Iran. ‘My wife told me to raise my life insurance. She doesn’t think I will come back’, the professor says. [AR]
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