Byron Sharp - How Brands Grow: What Marketers Dont Know

Marketing is a creative profession. So is architecture: architects design masterpieces like the Taj Mahal and the Sydney Opera House, but architects use their creativity within a framework of physical laws. Architects must design buildings that will not collapse under their own weight or blow over in a breeze; they cannot choose to ignore the law of gravity, or hope their building is immune to the laws of physics.

Marketers, even senior marketing academics, like to say that there can be no laws concerned with marketing. These people argue that consumers are far too individual and unpredictable. Research has shown this is utter nonsense. This ill-founded belief stops academics doing their job and searching for law-like patterns in buying behaviour and marketing effects. It also allows marketers to carry on with 'anything goes' marketing plans. Imagine if architects designed 'anything goes' plans Let's build out of fairy-floss', 'Let's add another 68 floors!

Marketers argue with each other about things that have nothing to do with the creativity of the discipline; about things that should be known for certain. It's time for this to stop. This book reveals the predictable patterns in how buyers buy, and how sales grow things all marketers should know, not argue about.

These patterns are valuable knowledge. It's often thought that great marketing strategy is obvious with hindsight everyone can see what you did and copy you. This might be true for new products or some advertising campaigns, but in reality marketing offers the ability to outperform competitors while they scratch their heads wondering why on earth you are doing so well. Unfortunately, marketers themselves often have no idea why one of their own campaigns worked and others did not. Their explanations as to what they got right or wrong are often wide of the mark because their assumptions (the theories in their head) are wrong.

This book is for marketers who are willing to learn new things based on classical science, and to shake off the superstition (and unfounded speculation) that today passes for marketing theory.

Read the assumptions in Table 1.

Table 1: Marketing assumptions