In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters Review

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In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters ReviewIn 1982, Tom Peters told the world about how excellent companies were turning around the US economy. What Peters failed to recognize was that many of the companies that he was looking at weren't actually "excellent" but were in fact huge clunking dinosaurs that were producing buggy whips in the age of the automobile. New, smaller companies came around and ate the lunch of the big "excellent" guys and then proceeded to make either the exact same stupid mistakes as the big guys or new and more innovative stupid mistakes.
This book basically deals with the stupidity found in high tech companies of the 1980's and 1990's. Why is Microsoft such a huge company today? It isn't because their products were better or because they cheated other companies out of their rightful place in the market. It's because they weren't as stupid as their competition. Merrill Chapman takes us through the comedy of errors that companies like Digital Research, WordStar, Lotus, and Ashton-Tate went through as they tossed their market leads aside in fits of stupidity. You can't help but laugh (or cry) at the amazing levels of stupidity that these companies exhibited. Examples: WordStar was once one of the finest word processing programs in the world. But somehow the company ended up owning two competing mediocre products. Lotus was the leader in spreadsheets but ignored the rise of Windows and allowed themselves to be knocked out of first place by Excel. These and many more examples are well documented in this book.
The book is not an in-depth study of the business world. You won't find very much analysis of why a particular company made such obviously fatal errors. Why did Borland pay an outrageous sum to buy Ashton-Tate at a time when Ashton-Tate had virtually nothing that Borland needed? You won't find the answer here. What you will find is an amusing, well-written (without being vicious) examination of the collapse of perfectly good companies under the weight of their own serious errors of judgment.
There is a moral to be learned from this book. It isn't necessary to be excellent. In fact, excellence can be expensive and drive up your costs so much that they make your products uncompetitive. The secret is not to be excellent, in fact you don't even have to be very smart. All you need to be is less stupid that your competitors. Just ask Microsoft.In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters OverviewIn Search of Stupidity is National Lampoon meets Peter Drucker. In Search of Stupidity is a funny and well written business book that takes a look at some of the most influential marketing and business philosophies of the last twenty years and, through the dark glass of hindsight, provides a educational and vastly entertaining examination of why they didn't work. And make no mistake, most of them did not work. Richly illustrated with cartoons and reproductions of many of the actual campaigns used at the time marketing wizard Richard Chapman takes readers on a hilarious ride through the last twenty years. Filled with personal anecdotes spanning Chapman's remarkable career (he was present at many now famous meetings and events) In Search of Stupidity takes a no holds barred look at the uncreative and hopeless marketing ideas surrounding the technology industry. It offers clear, detailed analysis of what happened, why, and what you can do to avoid acting stupidly in the future. This book offers unique insights into the avoidable mistakes made by some of the country's largest and best known high tech companies as well as succinct, to-the-point advice on how companies can avoid acting stupidly. It is aimed at people in the high tech industries, both software and hardware sides of the business. The software side is more heavily represented since software is more glamorous and highly covered than the hardware. Because it is a business book, I believe it also has appeal to the general business book market and the title should attract anyone interested in the various marketing disciplines.

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Social Media Playbook for Business: Reaching Your Online Community with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and More Review

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Social Media Playbook for Business: Reaching Your Online Community with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and More ReviewThere are two types of books about Social Media Marketing. The first type is a down-and-dirty laundry list of every social media under the sun with detailed information on how to set up a page, put in a nifty background image, post a post, and every other esoterica. But very little theory. The second type is a theory book with lots of mind candy, but short on the details.
Funk's book is more the latter, a theory book. It has lots of interesting theory and tidbits, but few web links and few "how to" examples. It's a concept book, one that gets your mind thinking. It doesn't give you a plan, or a concrete laundry list of to do's. So if you buy this book, also buy a more practical book on Social Media Marketing (or take a class on SMM; I teach Social media Marketing online and in San Francisco - just Google 'Jason McDonald' to find my classes).
But, this book has one precious amazing chapter: Fails and Fiascos. It is the ONLY book I have every read on SMM, and I read a lot of them, that discusses blazing failures. I read these books on BART on my way up to my own Social Media Marketing classes in the city, and I was laughing out loud at 'Jennifer Laycock and the Pork Board,' 'T&J Towing,' and 'Monster Versus Vermonster.' Funk does an amazing job describing these 'Social Media Fails' and he gives you great feedback and food for thought on what might work, and what might blow up in your face in terms of Social Media Marketing.
Most of these books are just cheerleaders for social media. Funk actually gives you some of the down and dirty, explaining - for instance - that the vast majority of Twitter and Facebook pages for businesses just languish in cyberspace.
For that, this book is worth a buy and I will recommend it to my own students who want not to be the next 'Epic Fail' of Social Media but the next 'Epic Success.'Social Media Playbook for Business: Reaching Your Online Community with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and More Overview

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The Brand Mindset: Five Essential Strategies for Building Brand Advantage Throughout Your Company Review

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The Brand Mindset: Five Essential Strategies for Building Brand Advantage Throughout Your Company ReviewBrand Mindset is an excellant book! Duane shares his insight and branding expertise in a very easy manner. Many business, and marketing books are "lecture focused", the written version of listen and dictation. Duane's Brand Mindset is written in a conversational manner. You feel included in a discussion, not just black & white text. The case studies used, help put the principles of each chapter into real life context. This book certainly belongs in the library of anyone interested in marketing, branding, or building a strong business. A very important book.The Brand Mindset: Five Essential Strategies for Building Brand Advantage Throughout Your Company OverviewHow Starbucks became Starbucks and other secrets of branding success. Aimed at managers, nt just marketers, a famed consultant presents a powerful prescription for understanding, building, and sustaining brand equity. Duane Knapp demonstrates, from a management perspective, why "a company's brand is the most valuable asset it can have." heshows how the very best practitioners - contemporary household names like Starbucks, Citicorp, Whirlpool, Lexus, Hallmark, and others - shrewdly develop and maintain their brands even in the face of ferocious competition.
Readers can assess and improve their own efforts by adopting Knapp's five proven components of the Brand Mindset that is for brand success: Make a promise to the consumer; make all decisions with the brand in mind; make sure the entire company supports the brand's message; make the brand bigger than the business, and build one specific image for the brand and stick with it always.

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The New Portable MBA Review

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The New Portable MBA ReviewComprehensive review of business and management practices. I enjoyed listening to it.The New Portable MBA OverviewIt all started with one book that had a simple goal: bring the wisdom of today's top MBA programs into the home libraries of business professionals everywhere. In a nutshell—offer the skills, ideas, and power of the MBA without the time and cost. The idea took hold. And now, over 300,000 copies later, The Portable MBA has become a staple on the business shelf.
Since then, the '90s have brought revolutionary changes to the business world. We've seen management fads come and go, technological revolutions, organizational restructuring on a grand scale, the global expansion of most markets—in short, a total shattering of conventional business wisdom. The business world of the '90s and beyond is vastly different from what we saw in the last decade... And here to meet that new world is The New Portable MBA.
Designed to carry tomorrow's leaders into the 21st century, The New Portable MBA capitalizes on the strengths that made its predecessor a classic. It offers contributions from an international all-star team of experts from today's top business schools, and it provides readers with overviews of all the major business school topics, including managing people; finance, economics, and accounting; marketing management; information technology; leadership; strategy, and much more!
So what is different about The New Portable MBA? Plenty. It's been thoroughly revised and revamped to help you sort out and understand the new concepts, techniques, and strategies driving business. You'll find completely new or enhanced coverage of such crucial topics as:
Process management
Change management
The new role of the manager as leader
The customer-driven organization
Business process reengineering
New forms of organization design
Quality and productivity and many other topics that are redefining business today.

The New Portable MBA is for businesspeople who want to improve their understanding of the workings of the business world. It's for managers who want to sharpen their decision-making skills, professionals who want to make the leap into management, young men and women just entering the business world, business students, MBAs who feel they can use a refresher course.
Above all, it's for anyone who wants to further their business education and stay on top in today's constantly changing world of business.
"The Skills, Ideas, and Power of the MBA, without the Time and Cost . . ."
"...Seeks to give the reader 'instant MBA literacy,' an understanding of today's business environment and language. The book's chapters are written by scholars from premier graduate schools of business: they are designed to provide readers with knowledge equivalent to that which would result from attending the first year of a typical MBA program...A literate, concise coverage of key issues." —Choice magazine
"...Provides a framework for making reasoned business decisions and judgements." — Reference Reviews
"Useful as a starting point for learning the language and concepts [of business], refreshing a rusty subject or creating a framework for decision making." — Library Journal
"If you need the knowledge behind an MBA, but can't afford the tuition or time, this book can serve as a temporary substitute while you concentrate on other aspects of your career." — Women in Business
"...A particularly helpful resource for anyone who is an achiever in an organization..." —Memphis Business Journal
"...Should not only be read cover-to-cover but should command a place at the desk of every business professional." — Entrepreneur
"...Must reading for all business leaders. The book provides the basic building blocks for global competitiveness." — Noel M. Tichy, PhD Professor, University of Michigan Graduate School of Business Administration Coauthor of Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will

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Whiff The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age Review

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Whiff The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age ReviewI've always considered smell the most evocative of senses, the one most likely to trigger a visceral, emotional reaction or specific memory. Whiff! explains the reasons for this, and goes on to demonstrate by example and suggestion why scent, the original communications medium, can be the most powerful "new" form of communication in the 21st century -- not only for business and marketing, but other civic and social applications. Just when you think Brumfield is going off the deep end with his suggestions and prophesies for the application of scent, he startles you with a real-world example that shows his imaginings are merely the evolution of trends already in place.
The frequent citations in the book keep it from being a breezy read, but they add credibility to the overall case Brumfield et. al. build in predicting a surge in scent-based communications applications and vehicles.
I met Brumfield prior to the publication of the book when he spoke as one of three panelists discussing non-visual branding; as a result, I struck up an acqaintance and, later, engaged him in a business relationship. Brumfield's passion for his topic is sincere and deeply-held.
His book goes well beyond the branding uses for scent, but anyone interested in scent as a marketing and branding mechanism will be fascinated and better formed for having read Whiff!
Rich RoherWhiff The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age OverviewSecretly, scores of Fortune 500 companies, like Proctor & Gamble, Disney, Bloomingdales, Lexus, Reebok, Sony, Samsung, and Starwood Hotels, have been using aroma to bypass their competition. These cutting edge companies are using scent research to trigger and enhance customers emotions, perceptions, and brand loyalty, resulting in increased sales and satisfied customers. Whiff! conveniently pulls back the veil for the rest of the $3.9 trillion U.S. retail marketing trade, so that innovative small and mid-sized businesses can share the advantage of the big boys. Yet this is only the beginning stage of the scent revolution. This global wave is changing how branding and marketing experts communicate with their customers at every level across every industry. Whiff! reveals how exciting new scent discoveries are being applied to safety, security, healthcare, navigation, diagnostics, product design, and even on the battlefield. With a comprehensive overview of this global phenomenon, Brumfield and his team offer up a breath-taking whiff of the future and a plan of how to get in the game. Exciting Revelations from Whiff!
How Endorphin Branding can trigger a patterned, physiological, feel-good response in the consumer.
Research showing an almost doubling of retail sales receipts.
Embedded scent marketing triggers used to spark sales of tread-worn tires, brake pads, fan belts, batteries, and appliances.
Combating the global trillion-dollar counterfeit trade with scent.
Fashion s big future in scented intelligent and emotional clothing.
Life-saving scents that eradicate the killer Superbug MRSA and other deadly infectious microbes.
Scent alarm warning systems to alert the public of impending tsunamis, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and school shootings.
Battlefield scents for combat, communication, training, and non-lethal Stench Bombs.
A CIA initiative is becoming a Big Brother reality as the U.S. spends millions on an ominous plan to gather and store the unique signature scent of humans.


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Secrets of the Marketing Masters: What the Best Marketers Do -- And Why It Works Review

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Secrets of the Marketing Masters: What the Best Marketers Do -- And Why It Works ReviewThis is an excellent book which should be a timely and valuable resource to company executives and can also be of interest to consumers, as well.
The reader will certainly understand that marketing has changed a great deal in the past 10 years. The use of the internet as a marketing tool has greatly contributed to this.
The book is well-researched, and Dick Martin has captured the views of leading marketing experts in successful companies and executive search organizations.
It is astonishing to learn the measures that marketing experts are taking these days to delve more deeply into the habits, needs, and social settings of customers and potential customers. The author also points out that marketing is more than building a marketing department. Successful marketing involves nearly all of the various departments in a company working together to build a marketing culture in tune with goals and objectives of the CEO.Secrets of the Marketing Masters: What the Best Marketers Do -- And Why It Works OverviewAll the rules of marketing are up for grabs. Markets are fragmenting and globalizing; consumers have greater control over when and what media they watch; and digital technologies have changed how people shop, work and relax. But a small number of senior marketing leaders have tapped into the secrets of what engages consumers and keeps them coming back. This book reveals the keys to their success. Featuring exclusive interviews with experts from Ogilvy and Mather, Digitas, and Booz Allen Hamilton, "Secrets of the Marketing Masters" offers tips drawn from the experiences of the world's top marketers, from how to gain the confidence of your colleagues on the senior team, to how win your customers' trust. With this real-world, insider advice readers can discover the techniques that will set them apart from the crowd and create lasting customer loyalty.

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ROI of Social Media: How to Improve the Return on Your Social Marketing Investment Review

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ROI of Social Media: How to Improve the Return on Your Social Marketing Investment ReviewI have been doing a lot of research on social media and how businesses can use it to sell more products and services. This book provides a reality check that is most helpful. Instead of dabbling with social media, this book provides the techniques to get serious about social media and where an organization is in its social media journey. There is so much out on the blogs and website articles about social media that it is overwhelming. I run into people constantly giving me their two cents about the trends and what is hot in social media and it is confusing. If you are at all confused or feel uncertain where to start with social media then I would start with this book.
The book provides techniques such as the media engagement framework. The MEF provides the context as to where to get your arms around using social media within your organization from the perspective of personas down to how to measure each persona (influencers, consumers, individuals) and the way to appropriately reach them with the best return instead of grabbing the coolest thing on the market.
The entire subject of ROI is often a half baked attempt to provide enough cause to do something. In other words, ROI is not real as it is based on possibilities or intangibles. Real ROI is based on hard dollars not soft dollars. I applaud the authors for taking the position of defining ROI specific to social media with how to approaches. As a marketer and not a finance person, I appreciate the business mechanics of generating the ROI rather than a lot of financial calculations that would leave me trying to figure out how to apply social media to the calculations. The book does a fantastic job of applying ROI as would be expected by the title and it lives up to that title.
Other aspects of the book are the web links to current articles and findings on the web. There are case studies, tools to use, and side bar definitions that make the book a very useful guide. I hope the authors keep the book up to date as tools and trends change, however, the frameworks and approaches will have a decent shelf-life that I would encourage anyone to read in 2011 and for the next several years.ROI of Social Media: How to Improve the Return on Your Social Marketing Investment OverviewHow to Improve the Return on Your Social Marketing Investment
This book more than adequately covers this increasingly important topic, as social media begins to take its rightful place on the center stage of not just marketing but a number of business disciplines. ROI of Social Media is an excellent analysis of the current landscape. I cannot recall any book that singularly tackles ROI at this level, most media books simply give a passing reference or chapter on ROI, this is the first comprehensive study. – Larry Weber, Founder and chairman of W2 Group, Formerly of Weber Shandwick
We know that for 2011 and the foreseeable future, ROI is one of the top priorities for the social media strategist at many companies, ROI of Social Media is the right book at the right time as social media strategist are needing to work the various department within the enterprise and show that the investments in social tactics and tools are a good investment. The 15 case studies contained in this book will help the social media strategist understand how global brands are successfully using social marketing to connect to their audience. – Jeremiah Owyang, Partner, Altimeter Group
The ROI of Social Media is a must-read for any business looking to get the most out of their investments in social marketing. It sets the stage for marketers to interact with influencers, individuals and consumers and explains the relationships between them. This book breaks down into simple terms both "dollars" and "sense" for social marketers to live by. Fundamentals, strategies and tactics …this book has it all. The ROI of Social Media will be the dog-eared book that sits on the corner of your desk used to prove many a point. – John Lovett, Senior Partner & Principal Consultant, Web Analytics Demystified
Analytics are the core to a consistently successful marketing program. This book offers the metrics to manage social marketing programs, to measure their success, to diagnose underperforming elements, and to deliver extraordinary results. Kudos to this team of marketers in putting this essential book together. – Professor JC Larreche, InSEAD, Author of The Momentum Effect

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Convergence Marketing: Combining Brand and Direct Marketing for Unprecedented Profits Review

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Convergence Marketing: Combining Brand and Direct Marketing for Unprecedented Profits ReviewAs the marketing director for a sales-dominated, B2B transportation software services, I report to the Sr VP of Operations. He cares about one thing: does our marketing work? What's the ROI for every dollar we spend -- because I'm a cost center. Our weekly meetings are punctuated by a single expression: show me the numbers.
In our case, the numbers have to do with leads. We know that X leads equal Y engagements by the sales force, and Y engagements yield Z sales based on our historic close ratios. (We get these numbers through web analytics, our CRM, and examining all of our lead sources.)
But how do the integrated marketing campaigns we run perform? Which components of the marketing mix perform better? I.e., what's their ROI?
Here's a book that not only shows you the numbers, it shows you how to get to them: the "velocity" scale that tells you whether an ad is going to promote the brand and/or generate leads or help you clear out your inventory with a bake sale; the brand-interaction worksheet that will show you how to calculate the ROI of individual components of your marketing mix; and the customer dialogue strategy that will help you figure out how to communicate with your prospects based on where they are in their BUYING cycles rather than your SALES cycle. You'll also learn how to turn the "A" leads over to sales, while you cultivate the "B" leads, and chuck the "C" leads -- in fact, your profitability lies in all those "B" leads who will adhere to James Obermayer's Law of 45. (i.e., within a year, 45% of all prospects who raise their hands will buy something that addresses their need -- whether or not they buy it from you.)
There are also some very common sensical notions, such as empathizing with your customer (novel concept), that brand isn't nearly as important as your customers' relationship with the brand, and what works for Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Nike, or Starbucks just might not work for you unless you have beaucouples of money, a visionary CEO, or you might just happen to work for a pretty good company with pretty good products and pretty good people -- but no celebrity CEOs or brands.
I picked up Convergence Marketing because it promised to combine "the school of advertising and the school of business." It does just that.
In fact, after I picked up one copy, I got a dozen more and gave them to the marketing team, the product marketing managers, and the sales directors -- and my boss. We paused the old way of planning -- based on "gut" and historic precedents guided by a percentage of last year's marketing budget factored in with this year's revenue projections. Now we're "marketing by the numbers," so we can accurately measure the return on our marketing investments and feed the winners more and either get rid of or fix the losers -- according to the principles found in Convergence Marketing.
Caution: I mentioned principles in the sentence above. Rather than "can't miss" techniques that some business books tout, you'll get verifiable principles. All you have to do is apply them to your business, whether it's B2B or B2C. The beauty of it is, you only have to try something, test it, measure it, and then do the math.
Just one quibble: the title is a bit misleading. When I saw the words "Convergence Marketing," I thought it had to do with something other than the merger of advertising (creative) and business (numbers.) My guess is that when the 2nd edition comes out, the title will be closer to the essence of the book: Marketing by the Numbers, something my senior VP loves. Me too.Convergence Marketing: Combining Brand and Direct Marketing for Unprecedented Profits OverviewOffering a common language, better processes, and a set of practical tools, Convergence Marketing is a real-world guide that successfully combines the best of brand and direct into something more powerful and effective than either can be on its own. Convergence marketing offers the kind of real-time accountability that positions marketing as a vital and effective component of leadership's overall business strategy. Convergence brings brand and direct together with respect to both disciplines, within the same silos. And it offers the necessary tools and processes that deliver better results. Our global market demands nothing less than this fully integrated approach. Convergence Marketing is the key to shifting marketing communications efforts from a cost-based to a profit-driven model and will have your CFO begging you to spend more money.

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Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message Review

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Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message ReviewOne of the first things that struck me when I began reading Citizen Marketers, was the ability that Ben and Jackie (calling them McConnell and Huba just doesn't fit) have to take a concept as misunderstood as Social Media, and scale it down to where it is accessible to all, and to do so without talking down to the reader. In fact, the book does such a good job of giving background on the various forms of social media, that it can double as a general primer on the subject.
But where CM shines is in explaining what exactly Citizen Marketing is, who these people are, and what motivates them. I'll be honest, going into reading this book, I was a bit worried that this would simply be a collection of case studies providing examples of citizen marketing, bookended with an introduction and conclusion chapter. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, Ben and Jackie have done exhaustive research into the subject of citizen marketing, and instead of simply rehashing examples such as the CGM buzz behind Snakes on a Plane, Jarvis' Dell Hell, or the liberation of Fiona Apple (quite possibly my favorite story in the book, which I'd never heard of previously), Ben and Jackie talked to all the parties involved, and discovered what they did, why they did it, and who they did it for.
Their conclusion was that they were dealing with, concerned citizens. Citizens whose love of their favorite brand compelled them to take action on its behalf. And thanks to the rise of the internet, and more specifically social media, those concerned citizens not only have the tools necessary to produce their own brand marketing, they have the ability to reach others, and mobilize them to share their cause. One person's blog post lamenting the cancellation of a favorite TV show can blossom into a full-fledged petition drive that saves the series. A bad customer service experience at a fast food restaurant can be recorded and uploaded to YouTube within minutes. Jarvis' post about his dissatisfaction over his Dell erupted into Dell Hell, which eventually forced the Austin-based computer maker to totally re-examine their customer-service, and revamp their policy on reading and responding to bloggers(IOW, creating a policy for reading and responding to bloggers).
But in my opinion, the heart of the book lies in Ben and Jackie's breakdown of Citizen Marketers into four distinct categories, which they have dubbed 'The Four Fs', all with their own motivations for their actions:
1. Filters
The Filters collect all manner of stories, blog posts, podcasts, etc. related to a specific topic, and present them in one place. These filters serve mainly as an aggregator for content in all forms related to a particular topic, but also add their own analysis and commentary on occasion.
2. Fanatics
The Fanatics are very similar to evangelists. They love(obsess?) over their favorite brand/product/person/company, and are committed to informing others about this topic. They are in the truest sense of the term 'Customer Evangelist'. But they also have great love for the brand/company/person, and aren't afraid to criticize any action that they feel is detrimental to its progress.
3. Facilitators
Facilitators are community creators/builders. They bring like-minded individuals together around a central framework, usually an only forum or blog. Ben and Jackie liken them to 'online mayors'.
4. Firecrackers
Firecrackers are the one-hit wonders of citizen marketers. They may create a hit sensation viral video, or a blogging meme, and then never be heard from again. As with their namesake, they burn very brightly and quickly, and burn out just as rapidly.
In conclusion, buy this book. It isn't a marketing book, it's a book about your community of customers. What motivates them, and what inspires them to take action, both on behalf of, and against your brand. A customer is shaken from their apathy toward a brand, and spurned to action either in response to a brand's indifference towards them, or as a result of the brand's reaching out and offering the hand of empowerment to them. Right now your brand likely sits on one side of this fence, and gaining a better understanding of your customers and what gives them the incentive to act, will help you understand how they view you.
Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message Overview""A solid... insightful explanation of how the Internet has armed the consumer—which is to say, everyone—against the mindless blather of corporate messaging attempts. Drop everything and read this book.""—The Wall Street JournalThe woman next to you in the coffee shop, typing madly on her laptop, just might be determining the ending to next year's block-buster film or how quickly the hottest new PDAT hits store shelves. In homes, dorm rooms, waiting rooms, planes and trains around the world, millions of people are exercising enormous influence on what we buy, even though they have no official connection to those products and services. Who are they? What motivates them? Marketing experts Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba explore the ramifications of social media in Citizen Marketers. As everyday people increasingly create content on behalf of companies, brands or products, they are collaborating with others just like themselves and forming ever-growing communities of enhusiasts and evangelists. Fromthe rough to the sophisticated, the ""user-generated media"" of blogs, online bulletin boards, podcasts, photos, songs, and animations are influencing companies' customer relationships, product design, and marketing campaigns,whether they participate willingly or not. Citizen Marketers is the first book to document this phenomenon, examining some of the early winners and losers in this new genre, as well as some of its most noted constituents. With their exceptional knowledge of brands, products, companies and industries, the citizen marketers are democratizing traditional notions of communication and marketing, even entire business models.Features:
Research on social media
Case studies of people and organizations fueling the growth of citizen marketing
Clarifies the context and importance of technological and societal shifts that are changing the nature of customer expectations and relationships


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Customer-centric Product Definition: The Key to Great Product Development Review

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Customer-centric Product Definition: The Key to Great Product Development ReviewThis book lays out a step-by-step approach for new product development. I like the way they do their surveys and customer visits.
The first 1/3 of the book was a little dry, but the book overall is very easy to read. It was hard to put down as I was very interested in how they would put the whole process together. Some of the examples and tables needed more explanation. They were not as clear as they could have been. But overall this is a highly recomended book. Probably a MUST READ.
Although this book is largely "on target" in terms of how to organize your customer-centric approach to product development... I think it lacks certain human intuitive points. For example, there was no discussion of the name of the product, nor much on ergonomics. This book needs to be read in conjunction of those by Barry Feig and Doug Hall.
In this regard, I would think that a company like HP would use this type of approach, but not Steve Jobs of Apple.
I learned several important quantitative approaches to measuring what the customer wants. But at the same time I think their quantitative approach may be somewhat utopian. For example, when you do your customer visits and later your surveys, you may find that you discover something new... so you scramble and change your questions to proceed further. This would mess up the data in their approach. Thus, I think the process is a little more messy in real life. And, for really important decisions, intuition plays a greater role. I don't think I made up a matrix decision chart when I decided to marry my wife. There are alot of decisions that are like this in the product development area.
Another area where I had trouble was in the use of "value mapping" analysis in doing trade offs for deciding what features need to be included. This is another one of those cases of over-relying on the matrix approach. Suppossedly we are to determine a customer value -- either on productivity improvements, cost reduction or other subjective judgements. Well, let me tell you, this is ripe for serious manipulation. All you can do is get the customer to react to your designs. You need to read the Barry Feig books for more discussion on this.
However, I will use their quantitative approach in my next product development quest, realizing that it may get messed up a little. I really liked their discussion of how to do questionaires (the Kano method was terrific).
I thought their discussion of developing customer images was also great, but I got the feeling that this was not the author's forte, as this was more intuitive type of thing. Regardless, this was valable to me and I'm glad they included this in the book.
Perhaps most important to me was their confirmation that the biggest reason for missing the customer's desires... was FAILURE TO PROBE. I wholeheartedly agree. That's one of the reasons I laugh when I see the mall interviewers asking all those closed-questions. The author does a great job of discussion this.
The author, Sheila Mello, passes my test for a business author: she is a consultant in the field. This is not a book by some college professor preaching his hands-off theories.
There was a lot that I agreed with in this book, and there was a lot of important ideas that I picked up, and will implement next time. I recommend that this book be read before the Feig and Hall books to provide you a base foundation for your approach.
Highly recomended book, if not MUST READ.
John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TXCustomer-centric Product Definition: The Key to Great Product Development OverviewDespite the prodigious research and money devoted to new product development, nearly nine in ten new products fail to solve a perceived need--and are gone within their first two years. This unique new book introduces and explains Market-Driven Product Definition (MDPD), a proven methodology for identifying and understanding customer-value-based needs, then turning them into products that consistently break through the clutter of the marketplace. Drawing on techniques developed by experts from MIT, the University of Chicago, and the Center for Management of Quality, as well as product development experiences from inside hundreds of top companies, including Abbott, Compaq, and Cisco, the book reveals MDPD techniques managers can use to: * Determine customer needs and value-based requirements * Choose which requirements to satisfy in order to distinguish their products from the competition * Determine which trade-offs can--and must--be made in product development * Decrease time to market by up to 40 percent and minimize time to profit.

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How You Do... What You Do: Create Service Excellence That Wins Clients For Life Review

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How You Do... What You Do: Create Service Excellence That Wins Clients For Life Review
Frankly, I doubt if there are any head-snapping revelations left concerning customer service but I continue to be impressed by recently published books in which their authors offer thought-provoking perspectives, insights, and suggestions worthy of careful consideration. Just as there is a buyer for every house, in publishing there is a buyer for every book. My task as a reviewer is to help those who read my comments to decide whether or not the given book seems to be directly appropriate to her or his own circumstances, needs, and interests. How You Do...What You Do offers a case in point.
Bob Livingston achieves his objective of presenting a comprehensive, cohesive, and cost-effective program that (with appropriate modifications, of course) could be put in place by almost any company, whatever its size and nature may be. I think that his book can also be of substantial value to individuals in sales, especially those who are relatively inexperienced although much of what he shares could serve as "reminders" to sales managers.
Obviously, the best an organization can do to support its sales initiatives (as opposed to its marketing initiatives) is to "free up" its salespersons - as much as possible - from responsibilities that are unrelated to the cultivation, solicitation, and post-sale process. Less time consumed by paperwork means more time available to nourish customer relationships. A company can maintain zero-defect quality control of each product it sells. It can also ensure that there are no foul-ups with order processing, delivery, invoicing, and technical service. An appropriate analogy would be to carrier jet pilots who also depend on an efficient system to provide the information they need, then get them and their planes safely on their way to each target destination. As Livingston explains very well, companies should be customer-centric, indeed customer-driven and develop a culture that recognizes what Peter Drucker observed decades ago: "If you don't have a customer, you don't have a business."
Of course, selling today must take into full account that customers have more choices than ever before, that many (if not most) products are commodities or at least widely viewed that way, and that in general, customers are much better informed than in years past, largely because of immediate access to more and better information, much of it provided by Web sites. (There are several Web sites that direct people to other Web sites. They function as an electronic concierge" and can be quite helpful.) Purchase decisions - including the decision to purchase nothing now or soon - usually involve several people (what Michael Boylan characterizes as a "circle of influence") rather than a single decision-maker, so cultivation strategies must be diversified and "customized" and yet (somehow) coordinated effectively. If you don't think that's tricky, try doing it.
As Livingston fully understands, no sales program or system such as his (or anyone else's) can ever replace a knowledgeable, likeable, principled, and energetic salesperson, nor was it intended to be. On the contrary, it should be viewed as an enabling device that saves a salesperson precious time and energy, improves identification and pre-qualification of prospective customers, and in other ways (to repeat) "frees up" her or him to focus on cultivation and solicitation initiatives.
His book will help those in sales to gain a better understand of what to do...and how to do it. (Those who read between lines will also get some tips on what not to do...and how not to do it.) Livingston's book can also help CEOs and other C-level executives to gain a better understanding of why a customer-centric, indeed customer-driven culture must be established and then sustained.
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Joseph Michelli's The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company and two of Leonard Berry's books, On Great Service: A Framework for Action and Discovering the Soul of Service: The Nine Drivers of Sustainable Business Success as well as Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force co-authored by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba.How You Do... What You Do: Create Service Excellence That Wins Clients For Life Overview
Between the challenges of escalating competition, well-informed clients, and dismal customer service, today's marketplace is becoming more and more crowded.The result is that your clients have more influence and choices than ever before.If you or your organization do not consistently satisfy and surpass their expectations, your clients will take their buying power elsewhere.It's that simple.But by establishing service excellence as your top strategic and cultural priority, you will foster the strong relationships needed to win--and retain--loyal clients.

In this breakthrough book, customer service expert Bob Livingston gives you practical tools for transforming your approach to serving clients by strengthening "how you do what you do."Whether you're a business leader, a client service executive, a sales manager, or an individual, you can differentiate yourself from competition by adopting Livingston's simple yet proven roadmap for achieving Service Excellence.

In How You Do . . . What You Do, Livingston imparts a clear, step-by-step blueprint for transforming your culture, attitudes, and behaviors by illustrating how to:

Develop and live your Purpose and Values
Understand your clients' soft needs, and create plans to satisfy them
Seek continuous improvement by stimulating creativity and innovation
Keep your service-oriented culture growing
Create a passion for Service Excellence

Livingston draws upon a lifetime of experience in which he has achieved measurable success helping many companies shape their service cultures--most notably CROSSMARK, an international consumer products sales and marketing agency, whose remarkable transformation stands out as one of the strongest proof statements for this methodology. Throughout, Livingston benchmarks other great companies renowned for their service excellence, including Accenture, Henry & Horne, ECRM, The Nielsen Company, TBWA\Worldwide, Four Seasons, and many others.

Properly executed, this compelling and inspirational approach to service virtually guarantees the client loyalty that will set you apart from competition, and distinguish you by How You Do . . . What You Do.


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Total Access Review

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Total Access ReviewWhile I'm not one for too many business books, I took the recommendation of a respected friend and read the book.
I wear two hats in a web development and multimedia production company; owner and sales. The content of Total Access satisfied both brains. We provide our clients with communication tools that are focused at internal and external audiences. I found myself head nodding and matching many of our company and client experiences to concepts discussed in the book. The book helped me recognize (and hopefully capitalize on) patterns that we see occurring with our clients.
Regis may not see the future (cause it's already happening), but he may be the first reporting on it. I'd recommend Total Access if you are able to "apply" valuable insight and knowledge to your business life. Stick with Tom Peters if you just like to read.Total Access OverviewMarketing as we know it is disappearing, declares industry legend Regis McKenna.As marketers focus on advertising and promotion, the chief information officer is automating their core functions. As they obsess over brand, the chief strategy officer is dispersing their responsibilities throughout the organization. And as they squabble over whether marketing is an art or a science, McKenna argues that they're completely overlooking what marketing has become: a technology. What does this displacement mean for the future of marketing and its role in today's increasingly networked organizations? Who will manage the all-important customer relationship-and how? In this bold new book, McKenna marshals over forty years of experience as a marketing innovator, investor, and industry visionary to explore an emerging-and essentially different-marketing paradigm. In this unconventional model, says McKenna, computers and the network do most of the work, from data gathering to customer care and response. The marketing function disappears into a network of relationships and responsibilities between man and machine throughout the value chain.Total consumer access to-and interaction with-the marketplace replaces the archaic broadcast model. For marketers, the end goal changes from creating brand awareness to satisfying customers. And brand itself becomes a"persistent presence" which sustains the customer dialogue however and whenever the customer chooses. McKenna argues that marketers must shed their marginal role as image creators and take on the brave new role of managing this new infrastructure. They must learn to operate with one foot in marketing and one foot in information systems-integrating the people and technological tools necessary to deliver value and novelty to every customer anytime, all the time. Competitive advantage will come from engaging the entire business in this total access network-making marketing a mission-critical, enterprise-wide responsibility. A rousing manifesto by a renowned pioneer of high-tech marketing, Total Access will remake marketing and redefine success in our networked world. AUTHORBIO: Regis McKenna is Chairman of The McKenna Group in Palo Alto, California.He has worked with more than 300 start-ups, including Apple and Intel, and is the bestselling author of Real Time (HBS Press, 1997).

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Winning with Customers: A Playbook for B2B Review

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Winning with Customers: A Playbook for B2B ReviewWith this book (and the companion website & software solution) Keith and Jerry have achieved quite a feat: They link a quantitative, logical and rigorous methodology with a simple and effective way to execute. "Winning with Customers" provides step-by-step instructions to answer the two key question to commercial success:
-Why do my customers buy from me?
-How do I get them to spend more with me?
If you want to finally go beyond the stock answers ("We have the best products"; "We have the lowest prices"; "We have the highest customer satisfaction")to understand customer value and put it to everyday use, then this book needs to be on your reading list.Winning with Customers: A Playbook for B2B OverviewDo Your Customers Make More Money Doing Business With You?
Knowing the answer can help you build measurable and valuable customer relationships, outperform the competition, and unlock profitable growth.
Companies are blind to opportunities for profitable customer relationships without a deep understanding of how they create customer value relative to competitors. With a rigorous and measurable understanding of how customers make more money today and in the future with you, combined with supporting plans and tools to align the entire organization for success, a company can win and win big. Winning with Customers offers a step-by-step playbook to help companies develop this capability for themselves, act on it, build a culture around it and sustain it over time. The playbook includes case studies, interviews, and tools from leading B2B companies who have demonstrated success. Written by recognized business thought leaders and practitioners, this book will guide you to profitable growth. The book also serves as a launch point into a community of like-minded executives that includes a companion website which offers exercises, access to thought leaders, and other tools help you win with customers.

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The Global Brand CEO: Building The Ultimate Marketing Machine Review

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The Global Brand CEO: Building The Ultimate Marketing Machine ReviewThis new book is definitely a keeper! It's an easy read that's written in a smart conversation style that's almost like having the world's most respected CMOs and global brand directors at an intimate dinner party where they share their secrets to their successes!The Global Brand CEO: Building The Ultimate Marketing Machine OverviewToday almost every marketer works on or competes against a global brand. Think about it; only ten years ago things were very different. The Global Brand CEO is the first book to specifically focus on what it takes to win in global marketing. Building on over 20 years of practical experience, and having worked with the leaders of many of the world s most successful global brands, the authors present a simple framework and practical tools that will help every global marketer unlock the value of global brands and ready their organization for accelerated growth. The insights, vision and approach presented in this book are all practitioner endorsed; Some 45 of the world s most successful CMOs contributed with examples and case studies and the recommendations are backed by the findings of EffectiveBrands proprietary Leading Global Brands study which includes contributions from over 250 global brands, 2,500 global marketing leaders, and 21,000 global marketers and their colleagues.

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Brandjam: Humanizing Brands Through Emotional Design. Review

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Brandjam: Humanizing Brands Through Emotional Design. ReviewGobe can be very wordy and hard to read. Fortunately, he has little insights section at the end of every chapter and summarize the main points for you. It's an excellent book on how design affects marketing and consumer behavior.Brandjam: Humanizing Brands Through Emotional Design. OverviewBrandjam, the follow-up to the groundbreaking best-seller Emotional Branding, presents a powerful new concept from renowned designer and business guru Mark Gobe. The Brandjam concept is about innovation, intuition, and risk. Gobe explains how design is the "instrument" companies can use for jazzing up a brand—how design puts the face on the brand and creates an irresistible message that connects buyers to the product in a visceral way. Using jazz as his metaphor, he shows how the instinctive nature of the creative process leads to unusual solutions that make people gravitate toward a brand and make brands resonate with people by bringing more joy into their lives. It explores how design represents the personality of a company and provides its window to the world. Brandjam is an inspiration for brands and people as it reveals the transforming impact brands have on their audience. •Follow-up to Emotional Branding—50,000 copies sold in nine languages•Insider's look at creating powerful, compelling brands and identities•Exciting new ideas for using design to drive consumers to embrace brands

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The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers Review

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The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers ReviewThe future is here. Competition is getting tougher and customers are more difficult to please. On the other hand everything is connected, objects are embedded with sensors and software and information flows instantly to all corners of the world , thanks to the communications revolution. This book essentially looks at a networked world where customers and companies are inseparable and are constantly in interaction. In this paradigm, the framework of DART - Dialogue, Access, Risk Assessment and Transparency is introduced and the book proceeds to explain each of these in detail.
The word Co-creation will get included in your daily vocabulary sooner than you expect. Lots of diagrams and case studies are thrown into every chapter. But frankly, there is no concept that is radically different from some of the pioneering works on similar topics already published. To list a few :
-Customer.Com by Particia Seybold
-How to Grow when Markets Don't by Adrian Slywotzky
-The Innovator's solution by Clayton Christensen
-Adapt or Die : Turning your Supply Chain into an Adaptive Business Network by Bob Betts , Claus Heinrich
-Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Innovation by Stephen Thomke
-Priceless: Turning Ordinary Products into Extraordinary Experiences by Diana Lasalle, Terry A. Britton
-The Agenda: What Every Business must do to Dominate the Decade by Michael Hammer
Most of the case studies in this book are repetitions from these or are similar in concepts or processes in creating value for ( or along with) the customer. The authors have duly acknowledged and referred to an elaborate list of books and articles under "Aids to Exploration". But my point is that after going through some of the key works listed above, this book fails to impress on originality.
Towards the end of the book, Knowledge Management is brought in as one of the strategic tools that can be integrated into the co-creation framework.
It is certainly interesting to go through the book though it is a combination of old ideas in a new packaging. Young MBAs will find lots of new jargon that can be put to profitable use in job interviews.The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers Overview

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WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace Review

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WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace ReviewI read an awesome and inspiring book - Wiki Brands - Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-driven Marketplace by Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover.
Mostly it was inspiring because I like marketing and social media and this book is at the intersection of those fields. It inspires me to remain active in Social Media. Sometime the Time Management Guy in me questions if it is a good use of time.
I love branding. Al Ries is one of my brand heros. He talks a lot about positioning. Wikibrands talks about the impact of social media on this positioning.
Wiki Brands reinforces that the web has given great power to the consumer. Consumers now can own the media through tweets and blogs. Companies need a keen awareness that what they do will be reported on. "Social media acts an accelerant for good news about the brand as well as for bad."
And online dialogue is now a two way street. The web speeds things up so responsiveness is key.
Companies do not own their brand, consumers in the internet age do. All companies can do is "help" guide and transparently contribute to help the brand move the right direction.
Marketing cannot fix a bad product. Working first on product and service excellence should be the primary goal of any company.
Wikibrands has a practical list of things companies can do to support an online community including:
"Ability to join a VIP circle
Access to an exclusive channel or influence
Access to exclusive resources
Chance for gaining wider fame
Reputation building
Recognition by the company
Recognition by pers
Sense of we-ness versus the rest of the population "
It is a good book. Worth reading.
WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace Overview

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The Micro-Script Rules: It's not what people hear. It's what they repeat... Review

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The Micro-Script Rules: It's not what people hear. It's what they repeat... ReviewIn The Micro-Scripts Rules, Bill Schley identifies the salient point if you want to have a salient message--it has to tell a story, and it was to be in very few words. A well-designed message is memorable and repeatable--like a script, a "micro-script." Schley explores the public's fascination with messages that are so good they get repeated over and over again, and then he explains why. After dissecting what makes a winning Micro-Script, he also offers strategies for making effective ones of your own. This is a refreshing and readable book. Finally someone is talking about how you install an actual message into all this social media. Every communicator should read it.
The Micro-Script Rules: It's not what people hear. It's what they repeat... OverviewKnow how to make 5 words beat 5,000? Or tell your whole story in a sentence of less? For communicators now, it's critical. And the secret's in The Micro-Script Rules: It's not what people hear. It's what they repeat'
Call it survival of the simplest: That's the bottom line if you're in branding, politics, teaching, a business owner or advertiser-anyone who communicates in this hyper-connectedworld. Because with 300 billion messages going by each second, we can't break through by delivering more data. Human brains want less. They want to make snap judgments on the least bit of info. They want us to package it for them--in Micro-Scripts. That's why:
A new product seizes 50% of the market in two years using 7 perfect words. A lawyer won the murder trial of the century with 8 simple words.Ernest Hemingway thought his greatest story ever was 6 words long.The fate of millions was changed by a war, based on a 2 word policy.A presidential election turned on a 4 word phrase.
Imagine the power of magic words like these on your brand, your website, your business plan, your career. They're not just sound bites. They're story bites. Written the way we love to remember and repeat. Used by great communicators for 1,000 years. Now they're yours in a smart and entertaining book: The Micro-Script Rules.
'The Micro-Script Rules is dead on-it's how to verbalize a point of difference."--JACK TROUT, co-author of the legendary Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
'The missing ingredient in most marketing is memorability'Micro-Scripts solve that problem." -- AL RIES, co-author of the legendary Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
'As Bill Schley shows, Micro-Scripts are big marketing. Now, anyone can dominate a market with a few well-placed words. Especially you. So what are you waiting for?"-- DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT, bestselling author, The New Rules of Marketing & PR
'This should be required reading for every candidate and campaign consultant."--JIM KITCHENS, Ph. D., President of The Kitchens Group
'WOW, one of the most important books you will read in your lifetime!" --JASON JENNINGS, bestselling author, Less is More, Think BIG-Act Small--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Writing for the Internet: A Guide to Real Communication in Virtual Space Review

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Writing for the Internet: A Guide to Real Communication in Virtual Space ReviewFrom the earliest era of writing when the technology was making stylistic marks upon wet clay shards, through the invention of papyri scrolls and quill pens, to typewriters, to computer keyboards, to held-hand blackberries and the most recent mechanical advance in writing -- twittering, technology has impacted in how we communicate through the written word. That evolution, interestingly enough, has gone from the simple to the complex and now back to simple. Each technological development had its own demands imposed upon those who would write -- and the Internet is no exception. That's why "Writing for the Internet: A Guide to Real Communication in Virtual Space", the collaborative work of Craig Baehr and Bob Schaller, is so timely and highly recommended. Spanning a wide range of relevant issues, this thoroughly 'user friendly' introduction and instruction guide ranges from online publishing to blogging and everything in-between. Identifying and addressing the factors that make for good, effective, professional quality writing in a cyberspace medium, "Writing for the Internet" is an ideal classroom textbook, self-instruction manual, and a solid reference work for personal, academic, and community library Writing/Publishing reference collections and supplemental reading lists.Writing for the Internet: A Guide to Real Communication in Virtual Space Overview

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Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little Review

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Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little ReviewI bought Microstyle after reading the NY Times review, and found it to be an interesting but slightly repetitive survey of short marketing messages and funny one-liners.
Most of the examples in the book are advertising slogans, mixed in with far too many fake headlines from The Onion and selections from Twitter Wit and the FakeAPStyleGuide. I kept waiting for a discussion of more substantive micro-communication. There was no mention of Iran, China, or other places where people have been experimenting with short bursts of text to organize, communicate with the world and avoid censorship. Surely the author has seen instructive examples of that type of communication, and I think the book would benefit by moving beyond branding, marketing and humor.
Highlights were the three short chapters on rhythm, poetic patterns and sonority, but in general this book made me want to re-read Strunk & White. For a more elegantly curated collection of microstyle, try Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style.
(As an aside, I bought the Kindle version because I could not stand to look at the book jacket. Microstyle applies to graphic design as well, and the jacket design is a clunky and nonsensical mixture of metaphors: ruled notebook paper, two kinds of typewriter text, digital type and a stylized magnifying glass, which might also represent a search icon. The author is able to elegantly dissect mixed metaphor in text, but his insights should have been aggressively applied to the cover.)
Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little Overview
A field guide for the age of the incredible shrinking message.
Some of the most important verbal messages we craft are also the shortest: headlines, titles, sound bites, brand names, domain names, slogans, taglines, company mantras, email signatures, bullet points. These miniature messages depend not on the elements of style but rather on the atoms of style. They require microstyle. Branding consultant Christopher Johnson here reveals the once-secret knowledge of poets, copywriters, brand namers, political speechwriters, and other professional verbal miniaturists. Each chapter discusses one tool that helps miniature messages grab attention, communicate instantly, stick in the mind, and roll off the tongue. As he highlights examples of those tools used well, Johnson also examines messages that miss the mark, either by failing to use a tool or by using it badly. Microstyle shows readers how to say the most with the least, while offering a lively romp through the historic transformation of mass media into the media of the personal.

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