Many, many books
In Bookbuzz we have covered many books about Marketing. From “Marketing 3.0”, which is about the spirituality and heart of the brand (=staff) to “Old rules of marketing are dead”. There the clue is in the title.
Books on how nasty marketing can be, such as “brandwashed” which is about how marketing manipulates and not in a good way. And really practical once such as “Powerbranding” which is about branding as an investment.
If you want blood on the wall marketing, there is always “Do-it marketing”
Too many books?
Lets not even go down the road of social media, selling or reputation management or CRM, which are all subsets of the marketing space.
Business exposed
It is difficult to see the woods from the trees. And there is very little science. “Business exposed” by Freek Vermeulen suggest that a lot of management (and marketing) theories are plain wrong. Vermeulen says that management theories are like pigeons spreading disease.
How brands grow
“How brand grows” tries to bring science to marketing and is based on decades of research that has progressively uncovered scientific laws about buying and marketing performance. This book is the first to present these laws in context, and explore their meaning and marketing applications.
Myth busting
It is a myth-busting book, in the tradition of classic scientific discoveries. Unlike most business books it’s based on extensive data, on real-world buying. The Nielsen Company and TNS, in particular, provided access to vast amounts of data covering hundreds of product categories and a number of countries.
The laws presented in this book are therefore not the result of armchair theorising, nor one-off case studies.
Medieval and ignorant
Basically Byron Sharp accused branding experts like Kotler and Aaker and most of us marketers as being primitive, ignorant users of “medieval” practices that are a waste of money.
Things that don’t work
Segmentation and brand differentiation are wasted efforts. Loyalty programmes don’t work. Price promotions don’t work. Light users are more important then heavy users and most users don’t love you (there goes “Lovemark”!).
His tips
He gives a few tips:
Focus on creating instinctive responses (habit), which is straight from “Hooked”. Which means you need to develop distinctive memory structures (that takes 2-3 years), you need to be distinctive, not different, you need to focus on the senses, you need to create universal appeal, you need to be always on, you nee to increase reach and distribution is everything, you need to be available.
Which means that mass marketing works and that super segmentation is a myth.
Innovation
From an innovation perspective that means that once you’ve spotted a market opportunity, and a product solution, innovation should continue with building a set of distinctive brand assets; the sensory and semantic cues such as colours, logo, packaging, design, tag-lines and celebrity endorsements that will make the brand easy to memorise and recall. Brands should focus as much on innovative distribution solutions as product innovation – the secret to innovation success is to get your distinctive innovation in front of as many eyes as possible.
The lesson
Distribution innovation as the key to success.
Ron,
Highly recommend How Brands Grow Two from Byron Sharp as he builds in further research about both luxury brands and developing markets.