Customer Reviews

Invisible Touch

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4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There are a lot of important lessons about marketing that many people never master. Even with a marketing course, you will miss many of these basic points. Work in marketing long enough and you will, and these essential perspectives will become ingrained. Although there is no substitute for experience, The Invisible Touch is a good compendium of many of those important lessons.

The first chapter is on the limits of research. Most people in marketing know almost nothing about research, and as a result assign it a value that is inappropriate. For example, when you measure something you change it. The author describes having been part of a Nielsen panel while young, and how the family's television viewing habits changed as a result. Essentially, he wants you to understand that most of what you want to learn to make great marketing strides cannot easily be obtained from standard research methods. He proposes some useful alternatives, such as depth interviews (where a longer conversation is held and the interviewee determine most of the direction).

I also greatly enjoyed his section on the fallacies of marketing. These should be posted on the wall of most offices. His perspective on services is quite good. Most business is lost by poor service, not pricing or product defects. Yet improving service is often the lowest priority in an organization.

His four key points relate to pricing (higher prices add to the perception of quality), branding (the clarity of your message and identity is of more value than your actual quality), packaging (people prefer what is beautiful and value it more highly -- they uniformly are subject to the Ugly Duckling stall), and relationships (making clients and customers feel important is job one, with lots of advice for how to do that).

I especially enjoyed his use of continuing examples. One was of attending a Laura Nyro concert, and being disappointed because she did not connect emotionally with the audience. Services are experienced and personal. "We give concerts . . . how much better can we give them?"

The other one was the famous Folger's crystals advertisement for instant coffee served in the Blue Fox restaurant in San Francisco. People said the coffee was the best they ever tasted. Clearly, the ambience, reputation, and circumstances of being at the Blue Fox all had a lot to do with that perception of the coffee.

The limitations of the book are several. First, it is not a general theory of how people decide to buy. For that, I suggest you read Robert Cialdini's book, Influence. Second, the conclusions you will want to draw for your own business may not always follow this advice. There is no clear pathway to decide what is best for you. For example, if you are exceptionally efficient and value is part of your brand, your prices had better reflect that and may be lower than the competition's (such as Wal-Mart, which is cited in the book, and Southwest Airlines). If everyone followed the literal advice in this book, it wouldn't work as well. Naturally, since few come close, that's not an immediate issue. Third, the book doesn't connect the pieces together to show you how to use each element to build on each other element. Communications is talked about quite well in the relationships section, but gets much less attention in branding (which it is equally important). How can better communications also help you be sure you are following the book's precepts?

As a result of these limitations, I suggest you use the book to stimulate imagination. A good follow-up would be to discuss it with your colleagues to identify places where you may have opportunities to improve. In doing this, I suggest you have someone facilitate the conversation. If you can afford to pay for this, a local business school professor would be a good choice.

Good luck in overcoming your stalled thinking that comes from a lack of experience in successful marketing! You don't have to make all of the mistakes that are possible to learn how to be more successful!

Donald Mitchell (donmitch@2000percentsolution.com)

As someone who was delighted by the clarity and eloquence of Harry Beckwith's first book (sending copies to clients and colleagues), his follow-up is such a disappointment in every conceivable way. SELLING THE INVISIBLE, more than any other book in recent memory, served to remind marketers as much as their customers, about the fundamental value and importance of marketing to any business today. Instead of following his own advice (resist the temptation to wallow in "partial-celebrity" that came with his first book) it feels like Beckwith did just that--cranking out a second book in minimal time, which contributes no new thinking or substantive ideas to knowledge already out there, and is not well thought-out and written to boot. Result? Where his first book was inventive, self-deprecating, humorous and filled with commonsensical wisdom, THE INVISIBLE TOUCH is pretty much the opposite--mundane, long-winded and self-involved ramblings of an advertising man, who has decided to write a sequel to accomplish little more than give his growing list of clients a plug. Most intelligent readers are all but guaranteed to stop after first 50 pages of so-called fallacies, thoroughly disgusted at best. One can only assume that the author and/or publisher let expediency rule the day here, ignoring one of the cardinal sins of marketing. Sustaining potential brand and customer loyalty generated by the first book took a back seat to hopes of making a quick buck on the second. Buyer beware!

This book was written by a marketing/sales expert who has his finger on the pulse of 21st century marketing. "The Invisible Touch" is also a quick-read that does not waste a busy marketing executive's time. I especially liked the sprinkling of real-world case studies and "lessons learned" throughout the book, along with the street-smart confidence behind Harry Beckwith's "keys to marketing success." Finally, this was a fun read!

Fast read for the busy person. While Beckwith presents four key concepts of marketing (price, brand, packaging, and relationships), he drives home their importance using examples we see daily. The Invisible Touch offers salient points and gets `right to the heart-of-the-subject.'

After this quick read, CEOs, entrepreneurs, web page designers, and service oriented businesses will appreciate the subtleties of marketing. CEOs will revisit existing marketing plans with `new eyes' and passion. Entrepreneurs will gain insight to the nuances of marketing and an appreciation for the importance of a good marketing plan - one written on paper, not just carried around in your head. Web page designers will find that The Invisible Touch is an excellent resource and reading reference for your customers, especially when justifying costs assocaited with well designed sites. Service oriented businesses will particularly appreciate Beckwith's ability to provide insights to marketing the intangibles of services.

From a personal coach's perspective, home business and entrepreneurial clients find this book helpful in determining whether (or when) to do the marketing themselves or hire a marketing specialist.

Keep this book handy.

Beckwith's second book is just as good or better than the first. I'ts fun to read. Every principle is highlighted with examples everyone can relate to and each section is short and pithy. Don't be fooled that there's little substance here because each section is such a quick read. Just the opposite. There's a lot to mull about on every single page. Worth reading, re-reading, taking notes and working at implementing these ideas into your business - no matter what kind of business you have.

Aptly named, "The Invisible Touch" presents brilliant insight into selling and positioning the intangible; services both online and off.

Beckwith argues convincingly that successful service offerings depend not so much on the actual services, but on the consumers' perception of the company offering the services and the consumers' perception of themselves as the decision is made to purchase them. The successful service provider communicates in crystal clear fashion the benefits of said services and charges based on the value delivered. (It's not what you pay; it's what you get!)

Perceived value is affected by numerous factors including environment and price. Can you increase the perceived value of your product or service by simply increasing the price? Beckwith discusses several cases in which this is clearly the case. Can a restaurant improve the taste of its' food by improving the decor? Arguably, yes.

When discussing State Farm, Beckwith states, "It is not slickness, polish, uniqueness, or cleverness that makes a brand a brand. It is truth."

This strategy has worked well for State Farm. Due to the abundance of information available on the web this may become a required strategy for any company.

Since I enjoyed the author's first book, I have decided to read the Invisible Touch as well. I started reading it and could not put it down until I finished the whole book. The book does not intend to cover all of marketing. The coverage is more towards brand management. The book is made up of many small sections and is very easy to read. At each section, he sites a real life observation and based on that observation generalizes and sets forth a marketing rule. Since it deals with human traits, it is a touching book at times and makes you fall in love with marketing. I recommend it even to professional marketeers.

Harry's second book falls prey to his own advice: the first one was so outstanding, that I expected something excellent and was disappointed with merely "good". Like many movie sequels, this book simply repeated themes that were great in the original, but have now grown stale. Of all authors, I was really disappointed in the blatant reuse of specific examples: the orangest orange example, the Peanuts back-of-the-shoes example. Others. I did read it cover-to-cover in one night. I did chuckle. I did enjoy the examples. But there was no blinding new insight.

Having loved his original, I'm disappointed with the sequel. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was expecting it to be outstanding. This didn't have it. If you haven't read Selling the Invisible, buy that instead. If you have already read it, don't bother with Part II.

I bought this book at the Newark Airport to take with me on a flight to a conference in Florida. I finished the entire book on the way there.

For anyone who deals in the fields of marketing, sales, advertising, or customer service, I feel this is a fun and useful read. In order to instruct readers on the value or good, cohesive, customer-centered marketing, the author uses a long list of anecdotes from his own vast personal experience. Each chapter is centered around a single, often clever, marketing lesson delivered succinctly. This being the case, the book is ideally suited to readers who can only commit to short bursts of reading.

Overall, I found the tone of the book light and fun. This made for easy reading about the sometimes dull subject of modern marketing. The author's creative take encouraged me to open my mind and get my creative juices flowing!

I think this will make a good addition to a business person's library. However, it is definitely not a "Marketing Bible."

As a small business owner, one of the most important factor in receiving (and keeping) business is marketing. Beckwith provides a lot of common-sense tools (that are frequently ignored by Fortune 500) companies that can be enormously benefectial--such as refering to a person's first name, and showing passion for one's work, true passion. Yet many of us forget how important common sense is when we are involved in our business. Beckwith's main advice is to remember the human touch--that you are dealing with humans. That means a certain style, a welcoming style, has to be imbedded in all that you do in your business. A very good book!

Michael