An Open Letter to Bob Gilbreath

Dear Bob,

I want to personally thank you for the passion and heart you put into your book, “The Next Evolution of Marketing.” Over the holidays, I read your book and have been talking about it ever since. More importantly, it has given me the leverage I have needed to make a difference.

I work for large company in Salt Lake City, Utah. We distribute groceries and provide services to over 450 independent grocery stores throughout the Western United States. I was hired to work in the marketing department while in graduate school and have been working diligently to influence the direction our marketing was going in ever since.

It has been a frustrating process, but with a lot of patience, talking and hard work, things are slowly shifting. As you are probably aware, we operate on slim margins in the grocery industry and this presents a major challenge when attempting to develop great marketing programs. We also operate in an industry that has been slow to adopt many of the latest marketing and advertising tools. It is these challenges that make the grocery so much fun to work in.

After reading your book, I sat down and wrote a lengthy email to several key individuals at our company, including our CEO. He is about half way through your book and he loves it. In fact, he loves it so much that he mentioned the book in our most recent corporate team member meeting. We now have over a dozen different people around the company reading the book, including all of our marketing department.

Your book is making a difference. Thanks for your efforts, vision and willingness to share you insights into the rapidly evolving world of marketing.

Sincerely,

Jason Sokol