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Title: Marketing Warfare by Al Ries, Jack Trout ISBN: 0-07-052726-1 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade Pub. Date: 01 November, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (25 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: the war of marketing - alright!!!
Comment: I'm a big fan of these two authors - Al Ries and Jack Trout. Now, don't let the title of my review put you off; but it's just that I've read 4 books in the last week by the same author (Trout-Sama) and I'm honestly predicting what examples are coming up on the next line before reading them. They are all very much alike.
We understand that competition is fierce and that differentiation is a vital key - we learnt this in the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, we learnt this in Diff or Die, we learnt this again in Marketing War-Fare. I give this book 4 stars however, cause even though the theory is not entirely original, I did like some of the way they put things. I am a big fan of Sun Tzu's work - and the comparison of methods of war with methods of management and marketing. I'm sure a lot of ideas had been taken from this.
My advice to the world is that everyone asks more questions when reading books. Don't just listen to stuff that authors say. Read Ogilvy on Advertising - the best book in the world. He is a genius. I'm not just refering negaitively to Ries and Trout, I love their work. But let me quote them and you make up your own mind - 'The problem with marketing today is not just the lack of rules. The biggest problem of all is the failure to realize that one ought to have rules in the first place.'
Now, you make up your mind. If Marketing had clear rules - like for example, Accounting, Economics (I think this is what you both are suggesting) - then how bloody boring it would come. I mean come on. If there is one thing I have learnt during the last two years of business school it is that marketing is the most amazing subject as you just never know whats going to happen next. How someone will advertise a product, what campaign will happen next, who will be the next start-up, how your competitor will attack you. It's all amazing. Compare that to bloody accounting - what a joke. And you guys wanna bring in rules. It's ok to present an idea, but it's not ok in today's business world to proclaim to the entire world that marketing lacks rules, and that I HAVE A PROBLEM not understanding that rules should exist in the unique marketing world.
Ries and Trout, you are lucky to get 4 stars off me this time.
Rating: 5
Summary: The ultimate strategy for the battle of minds
Comment: Marketing is war. The companies have to fight for customers and against each other. Thus the rules of military combat are fully applicable, Ries and Trout insist. That is why they use the ideas of the best military strategist ever known - Karl von Clausewitz - to show how to win a marketing war. And it seems pretty simple. However, only at first glance.
The authors give to a business strategist a set of tools to assess the position and the situation on the ground (which is minds of the actual and prospect clients) in accordance with two basic military principles:
- the principle of force: more money and human resources always come over less money and human resources
- the superiority of the defense: defensive strategy demands less money and resources to win the marketing combat.
After assessing the situation, a strategist chooses which type of marketing war to wage (so called "the strategic square"):
- defensive
- offensive
- flanking
- guerilla
Each type of war is in its turn determined by a set of strategic principles. Follow them and you are doomed to success. As simple as it gets. Just do ALL the things correctly.
The only problem is that you have to do correctly so many things while assessing the situation and choosing and waging the type of marketing war, that winning is becoming an art of itself, rather then a strictly defined set of rules. The case studies in the second half of the book show that even the best and the biggest companies often fail to deliver the positive results.
And the last, but not least: "A general can no more entertain the idea of fighting to the last man than a good chess player would play an obviously lost game", Clausewitz wrote. Admittedly, "no purpose is served by wasting resources to conserve egos. Better to admit defeat and move on to another marketing war", Ries and Trout add. I just cannot agree more on these statements.
Rating: 4
Summary: kudos to gen. clausewitz
Comment: this book very well intimates that marketing is war. so to deal with a war, different tools are needed. offensive, defensive and guerrilla war are some of them. the book gives insight of the history of various gigantic companies and the testing conditions the came from. sectionwise coverage gives a reader liberty to read according to the industry of his interest.
though the book has been written in a military style, but fun to read. the principles of warfare also are feast to grab. looks very obvious but are very profound. simply a delicious book for voracious readers.
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Title: Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries, Jack Trout ISBN: 0071373586 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade Pub. Date: 13 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing : Exposed and Explained by the World's Two by Al Ries ISBN: 0887306667 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 27 April, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Bottom-Up Marketing by Al Ries, Jack Trout ISBN: 0452264189 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: May, 1990 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries, Laura Ries ISBN: 0060007737 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Differentiate or Die : Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition by Jack Trout ISBN: 0471357642 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 17 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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