Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters [Hardcover]

Tim Manners (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 18, 2008

After years studying remarkable companies and speaking to some of the most influential leaders around, Tim Manners has discovered a solution to the marketing woes of many brands. Stop worrying about demographics, fads, and cutting-edge advertising. Instead, focus on relevance.

Manners shares how the best of the best create solutions to their customers’ problems and help them live happier lives. You’ll learn how:

• Levi’s reasserted relevance when it created wardrobe solutions for men.
• Dunkin’ Donuts stopped trying to mimic the look and feel of Starbucks and found success by delivering a simple, quick cup of joe.
• Hasbro reinvented board games for today’s time-pressed consumers.
• Kleenex’s new germ-fighting tissues helped keep the company relevant by turning a useful product into a necessary one.
• Staples stopped wasting its shoppers’ time with extraneous products.
• Nintendo’s simple design for the Wii appealed to consumers of all ages and game designers alike, allowing it to outsell its competitors.

The path to sustainable growth for your brand begins with designing meaningful solutions and providing them when and where people need them most. Relevance will teach you how to become—and remain—indispensable.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Manners, a branding consultant and editor, takes the reader through the various aspects of building a successful brand, using the title of his book as a one word manifesto; all of his ideas loop back to it sooner or later. Branding is no longer a numbers game, according to the experts that he quotes, but about making your sure your customer is happy; not just with the service, or the product, but in their lives. How can this be achieved? The author's answer: through relevant insights, innovation, investment and design. Combine these with careful attention to value and experience, and you'll get growth. What distinguishes this book is the author's scope: he's clearly well connected and has plenty of quotes from branding and marketing experts across several industries to prove it. British range manufacturer Aga and niche coffee retailer Intelligentsia are just two of the "relevant" brands that Manners explores, and this range of knowledge adds authority to an otherwise thin argument, which at times seems like the same old ideas, rehashed and rebranded.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In the hyped-up culture of the digital age, the buzz about a new product can rapidly vault it into must-have status, and at the same time, once-dominant brands can become irrelevant overnight. Branding expert Manners says that the rules of marketing that may have worked in the past no longer apply and that brands can no longer survive based on targeting demographics and traditional advertising. One of the solutions that has worked for companies such as Dell is to allow customers a forum to vent their frustrations and to respond with changes that satisfy their most pressing concerns. Through examples and interviews, Manners profiles dozens of companies, from Kleenex to Apple, that have rediscovered their relevance through insight, innovation, investment, and other revealing techniques. Manners, who has been a marketing consultant for more than 20 years, is the editor and publisher of Hub magazine and the editor of Cool News of the Day, a Web forum for marketing insights. --David Siegfried

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (September 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591842204
• ISBN-13: 978-1591842200
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,352,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really Relevant Marketing, September 19, 2008

By 

Peter F. Eder "communications consultant" (Darien, CT, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters (Hardcover)

As a seasoned marketing observer and as a prominent on-line and print marketing publisher, Manners shares a wealth of experience in a crisply written, laser-focused book. What dramatically increases its importance are the current observations of almost 100 chief marketing officers who are gatekeepers of the world's reading brands.

This is a book that should be on every marketer's bookshelf and in the hands of their subordinates. It lays out a clear road map of what makes a brand relevant ... and how it can be accomplished.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that matters, November 10, 2008

By 

Carl J. Kravetz (Los Angeles, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters (Hardcover)

I inhaled this book in one seating. It is a much-needed look at reality.

It very clearly puts into words the feelings I've been struggling with as I make the transition from adman to sponsored-content creator. I only wish I'd had pages 255 and 256 all those years that I tried to persuade my clients that the way to reach out to Hispanic (or any other) consumers was through relevance, respect and relationship.

I wish I'd had the perspective in "Relevance" years ago. And I wish I'd had some of the contributors as clients!

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reading, November 7, 2008

By 

Gerald A. Dibattista "Gerry" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters (Hardcover)

This is an excellent and insightful book. Anyone in business should read this as it provides useful insight from the prospective of many well know and respected members of the business community. It's the simple things that can make a business more successful.