Counterintuitive Marketing: Achieving Great Results Using Common Sense

I just read Clancy and Krieg's Counterintuitive Marketing and it was amazing. Loaded with content, solid research and practical advice. It teaches stuff about marketing I never learned in my NYU MBA program. I strongly recommend it. Then I read the screed (AKA review) by "Chanali from Asia." Who is this guy and has he worked for even a day in the realworld?

In Counter-intuitive Marketing, Kevin J. Clancy and Peter C. Krieg capitalize on the experience gained in their consulting assignments to lambaste "testosterone-driven, death-wish marketing" that emphasizes speed, relies on little research, and privileges short-term results. The outcome of poorly crafted marketing strategy and tactics is often predictable: High failure rate in launching new products, dismal advertising, sub-optimal promotion, premature commoditization of brands, and poor financial results. Clancy and Krieg constantly urge their audience to go back to basics such as research-driven targeting and positioning. Clancy and Krieg also remind readers that good implementation may be more important than great strategy. The appendix in the book "Marketing in a Nutshell: The 100 Questions Every CEO Needs to Answer" is on its own a gold mine. Counter-intuitive Marketing is ultimately a call to use more (real) common sense in turning a company, product, service into a success story. Smart marketers beware.

It's all in Counterintuitive Marketing--how to stop the decling performance of marketing programs, make better decisions, and improve ROI. The funny stories, witty writing, and cases make the heavy concepts easier to understand and see how to apply at your own company. How refreshing to find a marketing book that doesn't say let instinct be your guide when making huge decisions about your brand!

Clancy and Krieg rightly lambaste the seat-of-the-pants decision making of today's harried executive. Fast decisions might feel good but they are often wrong. The authors' thesis is really that information and painstaking care are necessary for truly reliable marketing decisions. Better to go slowly and get things right than to go off in the wrong direction based on misguided gut feel. This book is "counterintuitive" because it goes against the grain of all the "one minute manager" and "go with the flow" management prescriptions that we have seen too many of lately. It is really a call for rational decision making, and in the twenty-first century that may unfortunately seem unusual.

If anyone out there relies upon common sense to implement their marketing programs [and who doesn't?], this book is a must read. Why? The authors, Kevin Clancy and Peter Krieg, contend that the fundamental problem with today's marketing efforts is that managers rely way too much on common sense. That - and a whole lot of testosterone-driven decision making - are contributing to sluggish growth, declining profits and the downward spiral of once great American brands.The symptoms of testosterone marketing, according to the authors, are commonplace in most companies. Testosterone-driven decision-makers are "the guys who assemble complex toys on Christmas Eve without reading directions, book without a recipe, make business decisions without research." Testosterone marketing is easy to spot. Symptoms include: decisions made too quickly because there's no time to do it right; top management demands short-term results; real customer needs are unknown or ignored; too few alternatives for each decision are evaluated; marketing managers are promoted prematurely; and market plans are sloppily implemented.So what's the cure? Clancy and Krieg believe that quantifiable research is the elixir for developing strategies, creative approaches and tactical plans that can aggressively grow a company's market share, revenue and profitability, and coincidentally, launch and rebuild great brands.The book provides insights for creating strategies that prevent "over-and-over-again" marketing, as well as practical advice about how to actually implement successful marketing programs. Unlike so many business books that are either about strategy or some tactical aspect of marketing, Counterintuitive Marketing provides both and does so with real world company examples and amusing anecdotes from the authors' consulting and teaching experiences.One of the best parts of this book is its Appendix: Marketing in a Nutshell: the 100 Questions Every CEO Needs to Answer. It's a fantastic reference guide to the most important elements of strategic and marketing planning, targeting and positioning, product and pricing strategy, mass media advertising, direct marketing, customer satisfaction and retention, e-commerce, marketing planning, test marketing, and implementation. When in doubt - turn to page 323! I still contend that there's a big need for more common sense in the marketing organization, but the idea that the best ideas are often those that we don't yet know is very compelling. A great read for anyone involved with marketing.