Customer Reviews

Hitting the Sweet Spot: How Consumer insights Can Inspire Better Marketing and Adv.

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3 star:		(1)
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This book stresses the importance of marketing professionals putting the consumer in the center of our thought process. The author is a strong proponent of consumer research leading marketing strategies. Her main focus is that marketing professionals need to see the world through their customers' eyes. To address this, she outlines 12 principles of consumer insight and gives specific examples from well-known marketing campaigns.

The Cramer-Krasselt book club group agreed with the author's point of really understanding the audience we are trying to reach whether through public relations or advertising. Also, we all agreed that the author provided practical ideas that we could implement. Members of the discussion group related real-life examples of the twelve principles at work. For example, the author belives to gain true insight of consumers, one must observe consumers in their natural setting.

One person relayed the added insight he now had about his European client's cultural background after touring historic buildings during a business trip to Amsterdam.

Another example of "thinking outside the box" was relayed by a discussion member who recently facilitated a thought-provoking client meeting. In an effort to show her client how well-known companies have branded their products across several product categories, the meeting room was filled with products which have line extensions. For example, Arm & Hammer has products which run the gamut from kitty-litter deodorizers to toothpaste. Neutrogena has face washes, shampoos and hand cream. These visuals helped illustrate well-executed line extensions and challenged the client to evaluate its product and possible line extensions in a strategic way.

The author contends the "Sweet Spot" is hit when there's the right combination of consumer insight and brand insight. She cites the effectiveness fo the Marlboro Man as being on target. Marketing misses include New Coke, videodiscs, and the USFL.

Thanks to its pragmatic examples and knowledgeable yet down-to-earth tone, Hitting the Sweet Spot is an easy read and recommended for advertising and public relations professionals.

Who would have thought that a book that tells us how to
market something we may not need to people who may
not want to buy it could be bright, interesting and worth
the price?

"Hitting the Sweet Spot" is written to teach students and
professional marketers, and advertisers and others how
to stay in touch and truly understand their target
audiences. That's not necessarily a bad thing, even for
those who think we're too busy buying and selling
already.

I read this from a consumer's perspective and found it educational. Not once, after I opened the pages, was I tempted to sneer at the point of the book--teaching people how to sell. Why? Because the book strikes me as honest.

Yes, it's teaching kids and others to persuade someone else to do something, perhaps something they don't want. But at no time is there a hint of deception or arm twisting. It's simply a guide to knowing your market.

That's something anyone who works with potential customers in any
venue--and that's a lot of us, folks--needs to understand.

This book will teach you some terminology--early adopters vs. laggards, account planning, laddering and more--that is creeping into ordinary vocabulary, has applications well beyond plain old advertising and therefore must be understood. For those of us who live in this intensely consumer society, I recommend this book because it's really, after all, about us.

The book is written in a comfortably breezy manner, easily read by high school students and up, by Lisa Fortini-Campbell, a top-ranking woman in the advertising/marketing field. She offers us both theory and practical help, in sections ranging from defining the reason for understanding consumers to working with others to achieve goals.

Hitting the Sweet Spot is a classic in the field of marketing literature. Fortini-Campbell's insights came before the dot.com revolution and they have even greater application with the marekting evolution that has come with the web and permission marketing. She combines theory with practical exercises. The Sweet Spot provides a highway from Data to Information to Insight to Inspiration and leads you to becoming an urban anthropolgist and savvy marketing strategist. Whether reading it for the first time or the fifteenth, you will find it indispensable. If you are a marketeer who wants to be continue learning and getting better, sharper, and smarter consumer insights, this is one great road to take.

Hitting the Sweet Spot is a classic in the field of marketing literature. Fortini-Campbell's insights came before the dot.com revolution and they have even greater application with the marekting evolution that has come with the web and permission marketing. She combines theory with practical exercises. The Sweet Spot provides a highway from Data to Information to Insight to Inspiration and leads you to becoming an urban anthropolgist and savvy marketing strategist. Whether reading it for the first time or the fifteenth, you will find it indispensable. If you are a marketeer who wants to be continue learning and getting better, sharper, and smarter consumer insights, this is one great road to take.

Lisa Fortini-Campbell is a professor at the prestigious Integrated Marketing Communications graduate program at Northwestern University. Her book gives sound advice about getting to know consumers, and gives superb, real life examples for each of her major points. She describes various tools used to both understand consumers and to convey the knowledge learned to others, such as "attribute mapping," "benefit mapping," "creative briefs," and "laddering." HITTING THE SWEET SPOT should be required reading for anyone working in Marketing or Advertising.

This book was published in 1992, about 19 years ago.

The principles of Consumer Insights and Account Planning are basically sound and still valid.

But the cases used in the book are overwhelmingly outdated.

This book must be updated every one or two years to stay relevant.

Or else, those use it in graduate schools are not staying in touch with the changing face of advertising and marcom.

No chapter on Digital Advertising and Social Media. This makes this book a bit the grand daddy book of advertising.

While the concepts discussed in Hitting the Sweet Spot are sound, they are way too simplistic for a practising marketer. The discussion points are all things that the average marketer has already encountered. The book is more suited to someone who has not encountered the concept of how to generate or use consumer insights.

Great book. I love you Amazon. Skip the school lines and get your materials here. I saved over $250 by shopping on Amazon.com

I found this to be easy to read because of the way the material is presented and also because the font is huge! relative to other business books or books, in general. It's very informative and interesting at the same time.

well, this is a required text book of adv grad. I think the book tell readers something deep of the connection between consumer and brand