Customer Reviews

Marketing Myths That Are Killing Business: The Cure for Death Wish Marketing

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Not only is it easy to read, but it's shocking in its ability to zero in on what's wrong with the marketing business. A must read! For those who want more detail, try reading their first collaborative effort, The Marketing Revolution. Bottom line--if you buy no other marketing book, buy one of these two books. They are Marketing Bibles with enormous power. Why? Because they lay out in excrutiating detail how marketeers have been relying on well-worn mths to conduct business--myths that have no basis in fact. Thus, is it any wonder that so many marketing efforts either don't work or when they do work can't be explained. I should know. Prior to reading these books, I fell for the same myths. Not any more, thanks to authors Clancy and Shulman. Gene Pinder Director of Marketing U.S. SPACE CAMP

Perhaps this book was good 10 years ago but not in 2005. I read the first few chapters and after several hours of going through the so-called "myths" I just had enough...
Most points they call "myths" are common knowledge to anyone in business or marketing fields (At least NOW).
Again, I am not sure how the situation was 10 years ago but now it is not worth the paper it is printed on.
Many better books are out there so don't waste your time.

As a business consultant, one of the most important things I can do for my clients is to help them overcome their "time honored traditions". While you might think that the need to call in outside consultants is indicative of management's recognition that the current way of doing things isn't working any more, quite often the opposite is true. Organizational inertia, especially in the area of marketing, is often difficult to overcome. This book has helped me countless times in assisting organizations in overcoming "old thinking" and in moving their marketing strategies forward. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me - adamleft@webspan.net.

This book set me on fire when I first read it. Along with that other masterwork "Marketing Mistakes" this gem of a book is a great antidote to the hype and testosterone that marketing generates. A breath of common sense.

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 year 2011 has rolled around. Welcome to the brave new business world which MUST embrace Blogging, Facebook, Twitter and all else that will keep businesses on the straight and narrow---and it will be for the best, for everybody. The "straight and narrow" will not have to be less rewarding, but straying from it may indeed lead to hell. It may well mean fantastic rewards, especially for those businesses who move first and fast into myth-less conduct which frontline employees and customers themselves steer.
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Probably for the first time in their lives, honest sellers have every reason to feel optimistic.
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As a junior in the 1990s working in so many "marketing" jobs, I often had to "market" using methods I found distasteful, and which assumed customers were stupid. Most were not, I should add, and I remember feeling embarrassed to have to conduct myself on the premise that an obviously intelligent prospect could be sold to while being treated like an idiot.
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I believe many people shy away from honest deals and true value purely out of suspicion---they cannot tell between honest deals and those that are not honest. They can hardly be blamed for being wary---dishonesty is indeed killing business, but that has already started to change with the arrival of Internet-based facilities.
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When I first saw this book on the bookshelves, the title itself put my marketing experiences in a nutshell. While reading it, I found so much that so precisely articulated my thoughts and marketing memories.
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One of my brightest marketing triumphs was in a job in which the nature of the work made it necessary for me to be given a lot of freedom in the way I conducted that work---and the most important factor in my approach was to just tell the truth. When customers asked me how good [the product] was, they expected me to say straight away that it was "very good", "excellent" etc. Instead I surprised many by saying simply and truthfully that it was "good value", then went on to whatever details I thought were necessary, preferring to give factual information which I could back up with evidence or strong indicators. The business had been small and family owned, and I felt that they had given me the job rather reluctantly. This forced choice had, in fact, been equal to buying a lotto ticket which they never dreamed would win so big---the business grew by four times in two years.
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Most of the book deals with marketing matters as they related to corporations in the 1990s and I understand that many businesses are still seeing the world as if it were 1995. This book's value and relevance in the year 2011 and beyond will be in how this mid-90s information can be adapted to the terrain we see before us now---the terrain where Facebookers, Twitterers and Bloggers loom large and ever ready to deliver mortal blows to businesses who behave mythologically.
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***3rd June, 2011: Just adding to something I should have mentioned in the above: amazon.com is the earliest and clearest example of how the Internet has quelled dishonest marketing. The reviews here have saved me from buying and spending time on dud books. I relied on reviews to help me choose well-written books for much needed skills, and buying the wrong book would have meant weeks wasted, and opportunities lost. *Please note though; a book is not to be judged by a few one-star reviews, nor on the average star rating. I've learned to check on the credibility of each reviewer, and a single positive review from a reviewer worth his/her salt will make me buy the book, despite an overall low star rating.