The Marketing Mavens (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

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Capon's well-researched and sophisticated foray into the best marketing practices might be relegated to the ho-hum category. After all, one could argue, the central theme—customers don't have to do business with you; everyone is responsible for helping to create and retain customers—is a given today. On the other hand, many corporations seem to lose their way and insight in the welter of mergers, acquisitions, and just plain internal and external change. Capon comes to the rescue, although he is quick to admit there are no silver bullets; even those companies featured, from Dell and UPS to Alcoa and Prudential Financial, stumble on occasion. Yet most have conquered his five challenges: picking markets that matter, selecting segments to dominate, designing the market offer to create customer value and secure differential advantage, integrating to serve the customer, and measuring what matters. Details are prolific, one indicator of painstaking research. Jacobs, Barbara
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Review

"Mr. Capon ultimately aims to write a guide to help any company become a top marketer. He sticks to the five imperatives like commandments, making The Marketing Mavens a straightforward read.

"While Mr. Capon painstakingly supports each of his imperatives with company examples, he smartly acknowledges that even long-term winners aren't perfect. Describing personal-computer giant Dell's rise to the top in the 1980s and 1990s and its decline in recent years, he says that he panicked, late in his book-writing effort, wondering whether he should include Dell, as he had first planned. 'But then, as I looked across the business landscape, I saw that all companies, good and bad, have their stumbles and missteps. What distinguishes the good companies from the bad is their ability to limit mistakes and minimize recovery time.'Let's call that the sixth imperative."
—The Wall Street Journal, August 1, 2007

"A fascinating book with a much-needed, different point of view: One I have personally held for a very long time. This is big picture marketing about companies whose entire orientation is ‘to the market’. It’s about people at vibrant and successful companies who orient themselves to the outside world of consumers, customers and users. Everything marketing mavens think of and everything they do is in the context of the people who are actually buying the product and experiencing the brand. The Marketing Mavens is excellent. It’s the right book at the right time."
—Shelly Lazarus, chairman & CEO, Ogilvy & Mather


From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business; 1 edition (June 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307354091
• ISBN-13: 978-0307354099
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #494,000 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fresh thinking. And good timing. Capon does a good job here., August 1, 2007

By	D. Stuart "Researcher at Kudos" (Auckland NZ) - See all my reviews

Noel Capon enters a thoroughly ploughed field of business writing and surprised this reader by digging up many fresh treasures. He achieves this through his savvy research project (this book is way more than the standard round-up of usual suspects,) and through choosing some left of field businesses to examine: The Mayo Clinic? The result is fresh writing, fresh thinking and recommendations that aren't necessarily all new, but are re-phrased and re-expressed for today's times.

I'm beginning to find marketing gurus like Aaker (Example: Building the Brand-Driven Business: Operationalize Your Brand to Drive Profitable Growth,) somewhat tired these days, and slipping behind the game in terms of what the age of the internet has done to personalise and redefine the relationships between organisations and their customers. Mass marketing, as it became defined in the post-war years up to the 1990s, is over and done with: everything is coming down to a one on one encounter, but on a large scale.

Capon clearly gets this, and communicates this. I particularly appreciate his writing on how organisations need to better integrate (break down those silos,) in order to serve the customer, and how organisations must measure what matters. For many marketers, as they'll see here, 'what matters' may be quite different from what they've been measuring to date. Well recommended. $18? Spend your money.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another valuable text from Crown Business, August 20, 2007

By	Reg Nordman "(K)nights on the Road" (Vancouver, BC Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Another valuable text from Crown Business. I was prepared for yet another academic view of "the old regular big companies." Yet Capon really does deliver an easy to read and very useful marketing analysis book. It is fascinating and useful to read how the very large companies like Samsung, Amazon, Vodaphone , Dell and Toyota made dramatic shifts in their market approach and learned from their customers. I was particularly interested in the steps SAP took to recover from the MySAP and E-City initiatives which resulted in their corporate messaging move away from the technology and toward customer benefits. Did you know Dell is now no. 2 in PC sales in China and is hurting Lenovo on their home turf? How about Oracle using the Oracle Technology network as their primary marketing channel, resulting in significant uptick in sales and a decrease in marketing expense? The author has done us all a great favor through his depth of research.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Multiple Insights on Every Page, August 13, 2007

By	John W. Pearson "John Pearson Associates" (San Clemente, CA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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