Customer Reviews

The Marketing Mavens

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

When you read the first nine pages of a book, and you've underlined multiple insights on every page, you know you've made a good investment in a book and in your future.

This is the best marketing book I've read in a long time. Capon delivers on his promise of who the big marketing mavens are and tells how they do it. He gives us five simple imperatives in marketing and in business and provides in-depth stories on how to achieve them. This is a well documented well written book---a worthwhile read for all marketers.

Reed Holden, CEO, Holden Advisors

To get to the core of what works in marketing this book goes to the best performing marketers over the long-haul. The key is that they are not marketing the way they once were, because they are not thinking about marketing the way they once were. Excellent book and one of very few I've bothered to write a review for.

I was given this book by a member of our company's senior leadership in preparation for a national meeting. As usual I dreaded the thought of pounding through another book of things that I have already done in my 20 years in marketing. But much to my surprise this book explored parts of the business that need talking about and left alone the annoying "how to be a better marketer", entry-level dialogue that is so prevelant in books that cater to the lowest common denominator.

Marketing Mavens gets to the heart of the issue of creativity, innovation and true branding by addressing how marketing is viewed by senior leadership of companies. Too often marketing is siloed off as an expense item that produces sale support materials and does "communication" activites. This book bodly goes where marketers have wanted to go for decades and that is to have a proper place at the table in regards to strategic decisions that impact the reputation of the companies' brand to prospective customers, current customers and business to business customers (the internal sale).

Really great work and worth the read. I purchased a copy of this book for every member of my marketing team and for my senior leadership and it has opened up honest and robust dialogue about what we do well and areas for improvement.

Curious, I checked the origin of the word "maven" at the Online Etymology Dictionary and learned that it is derived from Yiddish word "meyvn," from Heb. "mebhin"; literally, "one who understands." That correctly describes the marketers at the exemplar companies that Noel Capon examines in this entertaining as well as enlightening volume. They include Amazon, Dell, ESPN, The Home Depot, Nestlé, Samsung Electronics, Starbucks, Target, Toyota, and UPS.

This is indeed a diverse group of companies. Also, the specific strategies and tactics employed by each to create or increase demand for what they offer (my preferred definition of marketing) significantly differ. However, according to Capon, they demonstrate the same five "linked imperatives" that all companies must follow:

1. Select only markets that matter.

2. Select those segments that can be dominated.

3. Design the offering for each market to create customer value while securing and sustaining a competitive (i.e. differential) advantage.

4. Fully integrate involvement to maximize value added to each customer.

5. Measure only what matters.

None of these is a head-snapping revelation, nor does Capon make any such claim. The great value of his book is to be found in his analysis of those exemplary companies in which, in ways and to any extent appropriate to their specific objectives and resources, these companies accommodate the five "linked imperatives." With brilliant skill, Capon explains how any other enterprise (regardless of its size or nature) can also accommodate the same imperatives while effectively fulfilling what Peter Drucker once asserted (in The Practice of Management, 1954) are the "two - and only two - basic functions: marketing and innovation...Marketing is so basic that it cannot [in fact] be considered a separate function...it is the whole business...seen from the customer's point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must, therefore, permeate all areas of the enterprise."

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad's Competing for the Future and Dean Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success.