Kevin Duncan - Marketing Greatest Hits: A Masterclass in Modern Marketing Ideas

MARKETING
GREATEST HITS

A MASTERCLASS IN MODERN
MARKETING IDEAS

KEVIN DUNCAN

A & C Black London

First published in Great Britain 2010.
This electronic edition published 2010 by A & C Black Publishers Ltd

A & C Black Publishers Ltd, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY
www.acblack.com

Copyright Kevin Duncan, 2010

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organisation acting or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by A & C Black Publishers Ltd or the authors.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Print ISBN: 9-781-4081-2639-4
Electronic ISBN: 9-781-4081-3438-2

Visit www.acblack.com to find out more about our authors and their books. You will find extracts, authors interviews, author events and you can sign up for newsletters to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers.

As always, my writing is dedicated to my girls:
Sarah, Rosanna and Shaunagh.

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt thanks to Gordon Wise for the introduction, and to Lisa Carden for helping it all along.

Cartoons by Gray Jolliffe.

For regular free updates and new material visit kevinduncan.typepad.com/greatest_hits or contact the author at:

kevinduncan@expertadvice.co.uk
expertadviceonline.com

To purchase the Apps of this book, or its sister title Business Greatest Hits, visit:

www.businessgreatesthits.com
www.marketinggreatesthits.com

CONTENTS

OVERVIEW: Whats the book all about?

Eating the Big Fish, Adam Morgan

The Pirate Inside, Adam Morgan

The Long Tail, Chris Anderson

Commitment-led Marketing, Hofmeyr & Rice

Flat Earth News, Nick Davies

In Search of the Obvious, Jack Trout

Marketing Stripped Bare, Patrick Forsyth

The End of Marketing as We Know it, Sergio Zyman

The New Marketing Manifesto, John Grant

Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin

The End of Advertising as We Know it, Sergio Zyman

The Cluetrain Manifesto, Levine, Locke, Searls, & Weinberger

The Philosophy of Branding, Thom Braun

Brand Manners, Pringle & Gordon

Manage Your Reputation, Roger Haywood

Buzz, Salzman, Matathia & OReilly

Lovemarks, Kevin Roberts

The Brand Innovation Manifesto, John Grant

Quirkology, Richard Wiseman

Panicology, Briscoe & Aldersey-Williams

Affluenza, Oliver James Enough, John Naish

Herd, Mark Earls The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki

Blink, Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell

The Play Ethic, Pat Kane

Welcome to the Creative Age, Mark Earls

Juicing the Orange, Fallon & Senn Marketing Judo, Barnes & Richardson

The 22 Irrefutable Laws of Advertising, Michael Newman

The Art of Creative Thinking, John Adair Flicking Your Creative Switch, Pease & Lotherington

We-Think, Charles Leadbeater

The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda

High Impact Speeches, Richard Heller

How Not to Come Second, David Kean Perfect Pitch, Jon Steel

The E-Myth Revisited, Michael E. Gerber

Simply Brilliant, Fergus OConnell

Whats the book all about?

Welcome to the definitive compendium of everything you need to know from the best minds in modern marketing abridged, condensed, and ready for immediate action. Modern marketing is a blur of jargon with thousands of books all purporting to hold the key to relentless success. The working reality is often very different, so here you will find everything distilled and summarised so that you can become an authority yourself.

As well as saving hundreds of hours of reading time, you will be able to grasp ideas with pithy accuracy, explain them authoritatively to colleagues and, crucially, avoid being hoodwinked by those who claim to understand a concept when in fact they have got the wrong end of the stick.

You need no longer be afraid of getting to the point quickly. Six short chapters draw together the most important ideas using some basic unifying principles such as:

Big theories are not necessarily complicated this book makes sense of them for you.

Simple ideas always work you can apply them immediately to your business.

Broad and often misused concepts can be clarified and demystified.

What is strategy? There is no mystery and plain language reveals all.

Treat case studies with extreme caution. If they were that easy, everyone would be doing it.

Marketing for big and small businesses anyone can do marketing if they are well guided.

Make sense of all the jargon and buzz words.

At the back of the book, all 40 books are presented as one-minute summaries to give the reader an immediate feel for the subjects.

How is it organised?

I have corralled 40 of the most interesting books into six sections covering the big themes, marketing principles, branding, consumer behaviour, creativity, and personal organisation. If you want to get to grips with one of these areas in particular, then head straight to that section. If you prefer a more sequential approach, then work your way through from the beginning. Although marketing is never chronological, you will at least be able to absorb the most popular current concepts, take a view on marketing, branding and consumers, examine the vexed area of creativity and then decide how to get sufficiently organised to enact some of it.

The six sections

Theres no such thing as right and wrong in marketing. Its all a matter of opinion. As a result, there are potentially only two ways to determine what the right strategy is:

the most senior person in the room says so;

the person writing the case history retrospectively decrees that it was, when in fact it was probably luck.

In the spirit of the second point, I have used a healthy dose of my own opinion to decide which books make the cut to appear in the book. I have chosen them either because they are widely acknowledged to be seminal works, or because they represent a particular stance or counterpoint to the prevailing view. As such, they may not all be the most famous, but they will offer contrasting views so that you can be aware of all the angles in a particular debate. I will be delighted if you disagree with my selections because this will mean that you are already reading widely and forming your own opinions.

Long Tails and Pirates: the big themes

In Chapter 1 we will examine some of the big themes that have affected modern marketing. For years people only ever paid attention to how brand leaders worked, on the grounds that they were the most successful, so you could simply copy their behaviour and become successful yourself. Thats all very well, but what if you dont have those resources and power? Thats where Adam Morgans