A wise and approachable look at the fundamentals of effective marketing.
A writer offers a series of reflections on the nature of the marketing world—and its fate in the social media era.
“Current marketing literature and the discussions on marketing forums show a profession in search of a role and meaning,” Rao writes in this look at the trials of marketing in the internet age. He at one point quotes an old industry pro’s familiar quip: “Advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.” Although the author maintains just this kind of upbeat, happy tone throughout his book, the actual tidings he has to convey can at times be dark and even scolding. His discussion of the marketing discipline extends to the heyday of the pre-internet days, when the advertising budget would often be the single largest line item for a business after the cost of raw materials, the days when “the advertising agency had a seat at the client’s top table, because top management looked to it for strategic counsel.” These relationships, he stresses, were based above all on trust between the business and the marketing firm, which in turn translated to consumer confidence in the brand being advertised. The trouble, he warns in his often insightful book, starts when this trust is taken lightly: “It’s not what you say that counts; it’s what the consumer gets out of it.” This kind of fundamental is often overlooked in the modern era, Rao writes, when the thinking is too often “How should we use digital?” instead of “How should we better engage with our customers?” The author provides plenty of intriguing ruminations based on his expertise. He has spent more than 40 years “in two connected but distinct spaces: advertising, with a focus on brands and brand strategy; and the media, in which I have also had a great deal of involvement in policy and regulatory issues.” The work’s clear, cheerful, and astute narrative aims to remind readers that some pieces of marketing wisdom never go out of date: “Marketers and their cohorts have discovered afresh the merits of mass media, and media axioms have become the new media wisdom.”
A wise and approachable look at the fundamentals of effective marketing.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5437-0584-3
Page Count: 270
Publisher: PartridgeIndia
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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