The Old Rules of Marketing are Dead: 6 New Rules to Reinvent Your Brand and Reignite Your Business
The New York Times and USA Today Bestseller! Reinvent your marketing to keep up with an ever-changing marketplace “A must-read for any business leader or marketer. It explains how brands must be true to their essence and be reinvented to remain relevant in this radically changed, information-rich, and Internet-oriented world.”
—Robert Hanson, President, Global Levi’s® Brand, Levis Strauss & Co. “Pearson makes the clearest statement yet about the new world of marketing
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Strategic Marketing 9E by David W. Cravens, Nigel F....
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Reigniting Business? Here’s An App For That.,
In an age when the unexpected can be reliably expected to occur without notice, it’s imperative for companies to be prepared to reinvent at a moment’s notice. While “reinvention” may sound like an unnecessarily drastic overhaul for many brands and businesses, it may be more easily viewed as the full spectrum equivalent of hitting the digital `refresh’ key, one that companies must be prepared to strike today to keep brands relevant, responsive and competitive.
That’s the premise of “The Old Rules of Marketing Are Dead: Six New Rules To Reinvent Your Brand And Reignite Your Business” by Timothy R. Pearson, an insightful and respected leader in global marketing and management consulting.
Every once in a while, a book comes along that dazzles readers with the writer’s perspicacity and ingenious observations on current business or consumer behavior. But more often than not, such books don’t fully deliver on actionable steps that businesses can take to leverage the value of these pithy insights. This isn’t one of those books. “The Old Rules of Marketing Are Dead” is filled with carefully calibrated action steps that can make each of its observations, principles and rules come to life in your company.
It doesn’t accomplish this by dancing around the tough questions or more sweeping challenges confronting business today. What’s required to achieve brand loyalty in times affected by recession, ongoing economic uncertainty, pervasive ADD, brand choice proliferation and price war conflagration? How can thought leadership invigorate an organization from top to bottom? And just how exactly does a company successfully navigate through cycles of deep recessions, seismic shocks to marketplaces and the continually morphing tastes of oftentimes irascible and increasingly demanding consumers?
There’s a carefully constructed roadmap to be found here, one that’s convincingly balanced on the need to continually reaffirm a brand’s fundamentals and the necessity of responding vigorously to evolving consumer and marketplace dynamics.
Along the way, Pearson redefines some of the traditional tenets taught at every business school and contrasts management and leadership, providing reality-check questions on leadership that may prompt many business leaders to reevaluate their own management style. He examines how companies often hunker down in tough times, sticking to the familiar path rather than reassessing, rethinking and reinventing in response to altered conditions, and the price that’s paid for such behavior. He re-elevates the critical role of brand essence, detailing disastrous outcomes that occur when companies act on the mistaken belief that a brand’s essence is chained to its brand legacy, demonstrating that the manner in which a brand essence is expressed and brought to life is something that must be continually refreshed, rejuvenated and reinvented to ensure a brand’s continued vitality.
There’s an ample stream of business parables and checkmate ripostes to naysayers and excuse engines, those who perpetually blame poor performance on the economy, competition or someone else’s department. There are fresh-in-our-memory examples of companies that suddenly fall off the rails and flail about even further as business erodes, all because they lost sight of their core, brand essence and brand promise to consumers. There are compelling examples of how the process of reinvention can uncover hidden business opportunities, how brand marketing is inextricably linked to reputation management and how a brand’s value proposition is critical to achieving differentiation and preference.
And you’ll find plenty of simple, riveting truisms- one being that any product or service today needs a good story, a compelling one to ensure that consumers understand it, what it does, and how it can enhance one’s life, all of which leads to perceived value, brand preference and business success.
For those who still consider customer service to be nothing more than a money-pit cost center, Pearson convincingly demonstrates why customer satisfaction and service today define the core of brand experience, and how consumers’ brand experiences convert brand perceptions into firm realities, and in doing so, define a brand’s fate. He redefines knowledge management as a resource critical to the vitality and competitiveness of a company, something much more than the most brilliant ideas and best practices of a company, but also its accumulated understanding of consumers and customers. He goes on to demonstrate how capturing and more fully leveraging a company’s intellectual capital can generate a continuing stream of thought leadership, which demonstrates competency and value creation that can, in turn, lead to differentiation, preference and success.
Indisputably, “The Old Rules of Marketing Are Dead” is an essential resource for…
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|The Old-Rules Obituary,
Timothy R. Pearson writes to companies and individuals who are fixated on the marketing rules of the past. He writes persuasively and effectively about how anyone can reinvent their brand for the new economy that we live in. It is addressed to larger companies mainly, but its useful for small businesses and individuals as well.
What are the 6 New Rules?
Rule One: The Core is Everything. The first part of the book helps to focus attention on what really matters, what the essence of the brand is. Very good advice here on how to emphasize points of differentiation in your field. Many businesses skip this crucial step, but without knowing your essence, you have nothing to build on.
Rule Two: You Have Nothing Without the Foundation. Guard your reputation carefully. Recognize that marketing should be defensive and offensive strategy, and use the tools for both. This section also has a great chapter on the power of a good logo design and why it is important (Principle #7).
Rule Three: There Are Many Choices but Only One Customer. This section focuses on your customer’s perceptions of your strategy. It is the core of the book, and the most helpful section. The chapter on why you should measure all marketing choices, and how to do implement it, is worth the price of the book. Marketing without measurement is a waste of money. Too many people focus on marketing as an art rather than a science, but for a good business it is both.
Rule Four: Do the Right Things for the Right Reasons. Some good information here about social media’s role in the new economy, but some of the other principles only apply to larger companies.
Rule Five: Infrastructure Is More than Just Pipes. Very good discussion on technology as the enabler of reinvention in the Principle #21 chapter.
Rule Six: Leadership Isn’t a Noun, It’s a Verb. Great conclusion. The author wraps up his thoughts on marketing and makes the case that marketing should be the leader for all areas of business, welcoming the changes and the accountability that is now crucial in today’s marketplace.
I thought that some of the principles under each rule were forced and did not tie together well and that a few were only applicable to larger companies. I would have liked to see more hands-on advice as well, though the principles should point you in the right direction.
All in all, a good book, and a recommended read for any business (or individual) looking to reinvent their brand.
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|fun to read and helpful,
This is a book made for businesspeople. Each chapter has an executive summary in case you missed the point. But Pearson’s big points are unmistakable: to market successfully know yourself and be real. In explaining how to use this insight to best advantage, he shares his experiences from the top of some of America’s largest corporations, including chief marketing officer of KPMG. For example, he says if you are Walmart don’t spend time advertising in Vogue. These days when big business and big business executives seem woefully out of touch with the plight the rest of us are going thru, Tim Pearson is a breath of fresh air. As much as we love Mad Men, today marketing must be honest as well as creative to succeed. This book is easy, fast and fun to read, and above all worthwhile.
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