An excellent, authoritative manual that demonstrates a deep understanding of its subject.
A sensible, seven-step process for developing an effective marketing plan.
As the founder and president of a marketing, communication, and sales-promotion agency, Fliehman (Customer Retention Through Quality Leadership, 1993) is eminently qualified to tackle her subject, and she does so with gusto here. This brief, straightforward book walks through each of her seven steps in concise chapters, each closing with an exercise designed to reinforce the content. Fliehman is consistently upbeat as she deftly describes her thoughtful steps, which approach marketing planning with a solid combination of the strategic and tactical. For example, Step 2, “Develop Purpose Statements,” discusses the strategic importance of a mission statement and then clearly delineates the difference between it and vision and values statements. On the other hand, Step 3, “Create Corporate Identity,” mainly digs into tactical details of specific elements of corporate identity, such as a logo, a typeface, and a color palette. A “bonus chapter” at the end of the book further expands on this step by covering how to build a graphic-standards manual. Thankfully, Fliehman doesn’t shy away from two areas that are typically the knottiest for marketers: budgeting and success measurement. Step 6, “Prepare Budget,” presents good advice for how to do so, such as by making an itemized list of deliverables, and it offers an example of how an agency and a client collaborated during a budgeting process. Readers may want to look closely at Step 7, “Implement and Evaluate,” because it contains such key sections as “Calculating Return,” “Projecting Results,” “Return on Investment,” and “Measuring Results.” The author also includes valuable examples of several specific types of marketing elements, including a brochure and a trade-show advertisement, along with measurement criteria for each. Fliehman prudently points out throughout the book that any marketing plan must be fluid and flexible so that one may easily modify it when it needs change—as they inevitably will. Overall, this book should be valuable to any marketer but particularly to newcomers to the field.
An excellent, authoritative manual that demonstrates a deep understanding of its subject.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5393-7023-9
Page Count: 126
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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