A longtime marketing practitioner challenges his colleagues to adjust to a new economy in this nonfiction book.
In this manifesto directed at chief marketing officers, Raj (Brand Rituals, 2012) suggests that marketing has evolved from the “Attention Economy” to the “Information Economy” to what he calls the “Insight Economy.” This, he writes, “requires us to translate and transform the huge amount of information…in order to find new avenues for growth by leveraging powerful and compelling insights that help us serve our customers’ real needs.” According to Raj, the CMO can no longer be a specialist in one area; rather, he or she must embrace the notion of becoming a “Marketing Decathlete” who’s proficient in 10 specific marketing fields, such as “strategic ability,” “innovative mindset,” “engagement focus,” and “deliver[ing] on equity.” As Raj explains these, he compellingly debunks some common modern marketing perceptions; for example, despite the current excitement about big data and microsegmentation, Raj cautions that “you can’t let yourself get so caught up in rhetoric that you forget what problem you’re really trying to solve.” Similarly, he says that chief executive officers and boards enamored with new technologies are just “becoming enablers of fragmentation”; as a result, he says, CMOs often chase “numerous experiments going nowhere.” Social media isn’t safe from the author’s detailed critique, either; he offers several examples of how consumer reactions on social media have contributed to negative perceptions of brands that “lower the bottom line.” Interestingly, Raj writes that he believes in returning to an age-old concept: focusing on the needs of one’s best customers. The optimum model for successful marketing, he writes, is “the TRL model…Trust, Respect and Loyalty.” Although the book poses no detailed solutions, CMOs who heed the book’s advice will, at the very least, take solace that the upheaval they’re witnessing is widespread.
A well-written, cogent, and concise argument that demonstrates ways to cope with the changing marketing landscape.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9967268-0-1
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Spyglass Publishing Group
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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