The Invisible Touch: The Four Keys to Modern Marketing (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The beauty of marketing is that it happens when we're looking but not noticing. Before you know it, we're using Yahoo! as a search engine, even though serious researchers will tell you that Alta Vista and Dogpile are better. We're buying products that cost more and perform worse, simply because the marketing and branding of those products tells us there's a value there, even if objective analysis tells us otherwise. In The Invisible Touch, Harry Beckwith tells us the obvious--what was right in front of our faces. But because of the blinders we wear, because of the way we've been educated, socialized, or just plain bamboozled, we can't see it as clearly as he can. Thus, in each of his "four keys to modern marketing"--price, branding, packaging, relationships--he offers counterintuitive information that could make or break a business plan. For example, he explains in great detail why a higher price is better than a lower one; why every business, from Apple Computer to the U.S. Army, is a brand-name to be cherished and nurtured; why the orangest orange sells better than the least orange orange, even if both pieces of fruit taste exactly the same; and why the best service providers always remember your name and what you like to drink. This is a business book, but one that everyone who works for a living should read. Pick any page, and you'll find insights that could make you a better teacher, a better salesperson, a better employee in any trade. Beckwith drives home the idea that we're all in the business of marketing ourselves, and we're in that business every waking hour. --Lou Schuler

From Library Journal

Beckwith is the principal of Beckwith Partners, a positioning and branding advisory firm in Minneapolis, whose first book, Selling the Invisible (1977), dwelt on marketing for service businesses. He begins his new book with a segment on marketing research and its limitations, then follows with a section listing and discussing marketing fallacies. His offers four keys to effective marketingDprice, brand, packaging, and relationshipsDwhich he treats in depth. Beckwith has written a helpful book on the use of these four keys in marketing services to potential clients customers, with the aim of both getting them and keeping them. He is particularly good on the nature of marketing, showing what it can and cannot do. This book should be purchased by all libraries that serve businesses and business people and also belongs in the personal collections of professional marketers.DLittleton M. Maxwell, Business Information Ctr., Univ. of Richmond
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Warner Books; First Edition edition (March 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446524174
• ISBN-13: 978-0446524179
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #568,575 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lessons from the Front Lines of Marketing, August 6, 2000

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

There are a lot of important lessons about marketing that many people never master. Even with a marketing course, you will miss many of these basic points. Work in marketing long enough and you will, and these essential perspectives will become ingrained. Although there is no substitute for experience, The Invisible Touch is a good compendium of many of those important lessons.

The first chapter is on the limits of research. Most people in marketing know almost nothing about research, and as a result assign it a value that is inappropriate. For example, when you measure something you change it. The author describes having been part of a Nielsen panel while young, and how the family's television viewing habits changed as a result. Essentially, he wants you to understand that most of what you want to learn to make great marketing strides cannot easily be obtained from standard research methods. He proposes some useful alternatives, such as depth interviews (where a longer conversation is held and the interviewee determine most of the direction).

I also greatly enjoyed his section on the fallacies of marketing. These should be posted on the wall of most offices. His perspective on services is quite good. Most business is lost by poor service, not pricing or product defects. Yet improving service is often the lowest priority in an organization.

His four key points relate to pricing (higher prices add to the perception of quality), branding (the clarity of your message and identity is of more value than your actual quality), packaging (people prefer what is beautiful and value it more highly -- they uniformly are subject to the Ugly Duckling stall), and relationships (making clients and customers feel important is job one, with lots of advice for how to do that).

I especially enjoyed his use of continuing examples. One was of attending a Laura Nyro concert, and being disappointed because she did not connect emotionally with the audience. Services are experienced and personal. "We give concerts . . . how much better can we give them?"

The other one was the famous Folger's crystals advertisement for instant coffee served in the Blue Fox restaurant in San Francisco. People said the coffee was the best they ever tasted. Clearly, the ambience, reputation, and circumstances of being at the Blue Fox all had a lot to do with that perception of the coffee.

The limitations of the book are several. First, it is not a general theory of how people decide to buy. For that, I suggest you read Robert Cialdini's book, Influence. Second, the conclusions you will want to draw for your own business may not always follow this advice. There is no clear pathway to decide what is best for you. For example, if you are exceptionally efficient and value is part of your brand, your prices had better reflect that and may be lower than the competition's (such as Wal-Mart, which is cited in the book, and Southwest Airlines). If everyone followed the literal advice in this book, it wouldn't work as well. Naturally, since few come close, that's not an immediate issue. Third, the book doesn't connect the pieces together to show you how to use each element to build on each other element. Communications is talked about quite well in the relationships section, but gets much less attention in branding (which it is equally important). How can better communications also help you be sure you are following the book's precepts?

As a result of these limitations, I suggest you use the book to stimulate imagination. A good follow-up would be to discuss it with your colleagues to identify places where you may have opportunities to improve. In doing this, I suggest you have someone facilitate the conversation. If you can afford to pay for this, a local business school professor would be a good choice.

Good luck in overcoming your stalled thinking that comes from a lack of experience in successful marketing! You don't have to make all of the mistakes that are possible to learn how to be more successful!

Donald Mitchell ([e-mail])

38 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars VERY DISAPPOINTING, March 30, 2000

By	Byron Reimus (Yardley, PA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As someone who was delighted by the clarity and eloquence of Harry Beckwith's first book (sending copies to clients and colleagues), his follow-up is such a disappointment in every conceivable way. SELLING THE INVISIBLE, more than any other book in recent memory, served to remind marketers as much as their customers, about the fundamental value and importance of marketing to any business today. Instead of following his own advice (resist the temptation to wallow in "partial-celebrity" that came with his first book) it feels like Beckwith did just that--cranking out a second book in minimal time, which contributes no new thinking or substantive ideas to knowledge already out there, and is not well thought-out and written to boot. Result? Where his first book was inventive, self-deprecating, humorous and filled with commonsensical wisdom, THE INVISIBLE TOUCH is pretty much the opposite--mundane, long-winded and self-involved ramblings of an advertising man, who has decided to write a sequel to accomplish little more than give his growing list of clients a plug. Most intelligent readers are all but guaranteed to stop after first 50 pages of so-called fallacies, thoroughly disgusted at best. One can only assume that the author and/or publisher let expediency rule the day here, ignoring one of the cardinal sins of marketing. Sustaining potential brand and customer loyalty generated by the first book took a back seat to hopes of making a quick buck on the second. Buyer beware!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Let's get right to the essence....", April 17, 2000

By	John W. Jones (Arlington Heights, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book was written by a marketing/sales expert who has his finger on the pulse of 21st century marketing. "The Invisible Touch" is also a quick-read that does not waste a busy marketing executive's time. I especially liked the sprinkling of real-world case studies and "lessons learned" throughout the book, along with the street-smart confidence behind Harry Beckwith's "keys to marketing success." Finally, this was a fun read!