The Age of Engage: Reinventing Marketing for Today's Connected, Collaborative, and Hyperinteractive Culture [Hardcover]

Denise Shiffman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2008

Marketing has undergone a cataclysmic shift. Blogs, comment sites, and social networks have given your audience unprecedented power in their relationship with you and your products. How can you deploy today's new marketing tools to break through, build momentum, and gain recognition?

Contrary to popular belief, adding a blog, podcast, wiki, or widget to your Web site won't automatically draw crowds. Fundamental change is required. Real-world examples from companies such as Volcom, Ryanair, IBM, Viking, Adidas, Proctor & Gamble, and many others show you how to open meaningful interactions with your customers, develop authenticity, share recognition, and engage.

Whether you're a marketer, communications expert, CEO, or business owner, you face the daunting challenge of marketing with your customers, not to them. In The Age of Engage, widely respected marketing strategist Denise Shiffman lays out a provocative blueprint for how you can

• Create persuasive value so that your products stand out in this new era
• Build trust by reshaping audience interactions
• Expand social currency and extend your sphere of influence
• Deploy new marketing vehicles to capture the hearts, minds, and wallets of your customers

The Age of Engage will transform the way you think about marketing. It will inspire you to engage audiences by interacting with them in new and inventive ways. And, it will help you reshape or reinvent your company culture, products, and marketing to entice audiences and catalyze markets.

Praise for The Age of Engage:

'The Age of Engage is an amazing and essential guide for business, defining the strategic path companies must take for product success. To master the profound changes in marketing forged by the evolution of the Web, every marketer must read this book!' --Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google

'The Age of Engage is revealing and straightforward and envisions a way for all of us to move easily into the open, interactive business and marketing practices Web 3.0 and beyond will require.' --Pat Sueltz, CEO, SurfControl PLC

'An illuminating text that assembles in one place the vast changes the Web is driving across marketing and explains today's requisite paradigm for reinventing your brand. It's Google Maps for marketers in this era.' --Tracey Stout, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Fair Isaac Corporation

'The Age of Engage is astute and inspiring. It has given me a host of creative approaches for marshalling the Live Web as a fundamental part of my brick and mortar business.' --Amanda West, CEO, Amanda's Restaurants

'The Age of Engage offers a blueprint for infiltrating the ongoing conversations of the Live Web that move a product from a mere commodity to a powerful brand.' --Ben Elowitz, CEO, Wetpaint

'Shiffman's conversational style embodies the authentic dialogue she believes companies must have in order to engage their audiences and succeed in the interactive age.' --Sam Yagan, CEO, OkCupid.com

Editorial Reviews

Review

In this excellent primer on using the Web effectively to develop marketing strategies, Shiffman (marketing and management consultant) offers an introduction to Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 and expands on the role of the Internet as an effective tool for businesses to truly interact with their target audiences. The author uses case studies and examples (e.g., Starbucks, Apple, Best Buy) to explore the Internet's role beyond the corporate Web site. She also discusses the important role of social networking sites such as Facebook. An appendix contains a series of exercises to help marketers understand the vital role that social, interactive media can play in developing their own successful marketing campaign. Shiffman's professional experience as a branding consultant is evident in the tone of the book. The Age of Engage is written with professionals in mind, and a certain amount of marketing knowledge is needed to fully appreciate the text. An ideal resource for business professionals and business graduate students as an overview of how to use technology for successful, engaged branding strategies --N .E. Furlow, Marymount University<br /><br />To succeed in today's global technology-driven economy, business owners must be on the leading edge in marketing their products and services. In this forward-thinking guide to marketing in the Live Web age, Shiffman, founder and principal of the strategic marketing and innovation company Venture Essentials, explains why and how CEOs must throw out the 'Four P s of Marketing' and replace them with a new paradigm of marketing in which email, viral buzz, search mechanisms, social aspects, widgets, avatars, authenticity, and story play major roles.

Over two decades, Shiffman has launched some thirty products and rebranded others, accruing over $2 billion in revenue; experience that she draws on to provide rich examples. In addition to explaining newly coined internet terminology for the nonspecialist, she clearly describes her overall 'V' strategy (Venture, Value, Voice, Verifiable, Vicinity, Vehicle), which she has found so effective for her clients. Throughout, she presents a compelling case for CEOs to 'implement interactive and engaging marketing that simultaneously targets individuals and the mass market.'

The Age of Engage is especially useful for already tech-savvy readers. Her chapter-by-chapter lists of questions help businesses assess their current marketing strategies. Finally, Shiffman refers readers to The Marketing Plan Wiki at marketingreinvented.com, an interactive site that everyone in business will want to bookmark and visit often. --Jeanne M. Lesinski, ForeWord Magazine

The Age of Engage, in the Nonfiction, has been chosen as an Honorable Mention in the Writer s Digest 16th Annual International Self-Published Book Awards. --Writer's Digest

About the Author

Denise Shiffman is founder and principal of the strategic marketing and innovation consultancy Venture Essentials. In her twenty-three-year marketing and management career, she has launched over thirty products responsible for over $2 billion in revenue, marketed pioneering computer and Web technologies, and reinvented the corporate brand of a Fortune 500 company. Her commentary has been featured in The New York Times and BusinessWeek, and on CNET.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 220 pages
• Publisher: Hunt Street Press; First Edition edition (March 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0979802806
• ISBN-13: 978-0979802805
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 0.9 x 5.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #990,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

With an award-winning book and burgeoning consulting practice, Denise Shiffman has created a new direction in life. After twenty years in business and feeling a little unfulfilled when she reached top executive in a Fortune 500 company, she started thinking about how to define business and life on her own terms. Today, she focuses her energy on writing, speaking, and helping other people succeed. Find out more about how Denise thinks at www.ageofengage.com/engage_daily_blog/background.html

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Not very insightful October 31, 2008

By J. T. Klepp

Format:Hardcover

If you have not had any (or very little) exposure to digital marketing, by all means buy the book and read it. However, for anyone who has had some experience with digital marketing the last 5 years, this book offers very little new thinking (unless you are really bad at your job).

While the book is full of examples, if flows poorly. The author's points seem to get lost in a somewhat poor structure, and too many points thrown at the user without a proper flow to it. The author should definitely look into pyramid consulting techniques in order to present better. And given the author's savvy in online marketing, it does make me wonder whether the other reviews are legitimate.

But again, if you are a CEO, or non-marketing exec, or an "old school" marketer, this books seems like a useful intro to you. But you should be out reading Techcrunch, Marketing 2.0, Mobilemarketer, Mashable etc etc on a daily basis, and you would not only learn just as quick, you'd stay more current.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read Book For All Marketers! March 5, 2008

By Rich Schefren

Format:Hardcover

I just finished reading The Age of Engage, and all I can say is WOW! As a thought leader in Internet marketing I read 4-5 books a week. And this book stands out in the questions it surfaces, and then (more importantly) the answers it provides.

I literally went through three highlighters trying to extract every golden nugget of information this book delivers. Plus, I bought copies for my entire staff - with the directive to read this ASAP!

If you are looking for a book that does more than just lay a bunch of theory on you... a book that really explains what must change, why it must change, and then most importantly HOW TO CHANGE - then look no further, you have just found THE book that delivers on all three aspects.

Lastly, the final seven pages of the book are filled with marketing exercises/questions that do an excellent job of helping readers take what they've learned and now apply it to their businesses. I hope more books begin to follow this format beacause it makes the takeaway value so much easier to dimensionalize and act upon.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Marketing Textbook of the 21st Century March 17, 2008

By Kevin J. Dean

Format:Hardcover

I picked this book up and could not put it down. This is a total paradigm shift for the marketing world. This book replaces the principles of 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) with the 6Vs (Venture, Value, Voice, Verifiable, Vicinity, and Vehicle).

With 15 years experience in technology and having lead major technology initiative for two Fortune 500 companies I recommend that IT professional read this book to gain an understanding of how to use their knowledge of technology to help transform their companies to be able to compete in the new marketing age that we have entered into.

Whether you are a small, medium or large business you have to read this book. This book is a must read for every single person in every organization.

Kevin Dean