Customer Reviews

Counterintuitive Marketing: Achieve Great Results Using Uncommon Sense

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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.

Clancy & Krieg have done an outstanding job at illuminating the many fallacies that take hold in today's marketing world. More importantly, they tell you why these same fallacies cause millions to be flushed down the sink and how you can, hopefully, avoid making the same mistakes. There are valuable and non-intuitive insights here that you'd pay lots of money for from marketing consultants. These insights are given in quantitative and qualitative forms in many cases, which is a satisfying blend in my opinion.

This book is aimed at marketing professionals, MBA/marketing students in intermediate-advanced courses, and CMOs who want a kick in the pants. Those looking for a "how to" guide or hands-o, jargon-free approach will be disappointed.

If I have one criticism of this book it's that it makes two big, bold assumptions: (1) you work for a large, multinational corporation with established products or services and (2) you have millions of dollars for marketing research. If, like me, you are launching a startup, then at best this book will give you some hope that some day you'll have the money to actually DO some of the things they propose.

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.

Full of good ideas, provokations, insights, this is another great book from Clancy et al. I'd recommend a full set of their books to anyone, not a dud among them.

For more of a similar vein try:
- Marketing and the Bottom Line (ISBN: 0273661949)
- Marketing Payback (ISBN: 0273688847)

The binding is falling apart and I've highlighted so many pages that my copy seems to glow in the dark, but there's no mistaking the value of this book. Counterintuitive Marketing continues to be THE best marketing book available today, bar none. Why? Because while it debunks many of the myths surrounding the marketing industry with crystal clarity, it also gives specific details on how to make your marketing better. This is not an armchair read (although it moves pretty quickly). If you're serious about marketing or if you aren't getting the performance you or your bosses are expecting, then read this book. It's an eye opener.

The first half of Kevin Clancy's recent book, Counter-Intuitive Marketing, is the best marketing book I've read. Period. The second half will fly a thousand feet over the head of most marketing practitioners, and can only be enjoyed by dyed-in-the-wool marketing researchers. It doesn't matter. The bottom line is these counter-intuitive concepts will probably change the way you plan and implement your marketing programs. I enthusiastically recommend this book to everyone involved with business-to-business marketing and advertising.

Bob Lamons
Columnist
Marketing News Magazine

Counterintuitive marketing was an amazing book. I learned more about marketing and the decision-making tools that are available today from this book than I did in my MBA classes. If you are a serious marketing person, you need to read this book.

It's not BS--this is the way the smartest people in marketing make decisions. People who cling to outdated ways of thinking and are afraid of change probably won't like this book. The only way to make better decisions about marketing is to take the time to understand your customers. This requires research.

People who skim a few chapters, will miss important ideas. For instance, the authors explain how to use focus groups correctly--as a starting point in the research process. They never say don't use them, they say don't use them to make multi-million dollar decisions. That anyone in this day and age is basing a critical decision on the opinions of 6-8 people is crazy.

This book is the future of marketing. Anyone who says otherwise just doesn't get it.

When I read Counterintuitive Marketing, by Clancy and Krieg, my first reaction was that they were the Howard Cosells of marketing--they tell it like it is!! My second reaction was that they were like a "new and improved" Howard Cosell--also providing great perception and insight into the field of marketing, both descriptively--as it is--and normatively--as it should be. I wish I were able to find a way to make this book required reading for all the marketing concentrators at the School of Management at Boston University. I'll have to work on that!

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.