For a full list of related titles,

and for other reviews which

Book Reviews
we do not have space to print,
visit our website
[Link] or phone
the IDM on 020 8614 0274
Marketing Revolution: The Radical New Approach to
Transforming the Business, the Brand and the Bottom Line
Paul R. Gamble, Alan Tapp, Anthony Marsella and Merlin Stone
Kogan Page, 2005; hardback; 288pp; £24.95
ISBN 0-7494-4385-5
Revolution? The title of this book is a tad sensational. As the authors say, today
revolution refers to a radical change. To be a revolutionary is to be
someone who threatens to overturn the world as we know it. But without
question marketing is evolving and transforming in an attempt to match
the rapid changes in the business marketplace and the unprecedented
speed of new media communications. Any corporation faced with the
new marketing landscape that does not change or does not reinvent itself
from time to time will be rigid, and, as witnessed by some traditional
household-name companies, will likely be forced out of business by the
competition.
Reasons and needs What this book does rather well, in a colloquial way, is to pull together
for change the reasons why marketing has to change. The changes, for example, in
retail from groceries, financial services, travel, utilities etc through both
traditional channels and more recently e-channels have created a new
customer, who expects to be able to make his/her own choices from a
wide range of options in most aspects of their lives. This attitude has
broken up the traditional marketing/product life cycles that existed 20-
plus years ago. All this leads marketing to focus on the customer
experience with the brand and service, to build stronger emotional bonds,
develop better channel strategies and fully integrate segmentation within
the core business.
Customer insight and Once you are through the first two chapters, which rationalise why and
CRM what this ‘marketing revolution’ is all about, the heart of the text covers
the latest developments in customer insight, strategic planning,
segmentation, branding, CRM and operational analytics. This brings in
strands of thinking from the authors’ previous books, particularly
customer insight and CRM. CRM is described as the heart of the new
agenda for marketing, but CRM has been a marketing tool for the past
seven or eight years and has recently received a poor press (not perhaps
always for the right reasons). Customer insight was in vogue a couple of
years ago and at its simplest level is a combination of traditional
marketing research knowledge with customer information, contained on a
marketing database (soft and hard data). Segmentation, whether it is
value-led or otherwise, has been explored by marketers in varying degrees
for decades.
A good synthesis What this book does do well is synthesise these developments and
advances in marketing into a more complete process of change. As an
introduction to each of the subjects it is very good and presents an

& PA L G R A V E M A C M I L L A N LT D 1 7 4 6 - 0 1 7 4 / 0 6 $ 3 0 . 0 0 V O L . 7 N O . 4 PP 371–375. Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice 371
Book Reviews

overview of what could be termed a new marketing process. Certainly

marketing today is not how Kotler envisaged it — the 4‘P’s and the 7‘P’s
went out with the 1990s. The real challenge for marketers is to keep up
with increasingly informed, aware customers who have their own database
capabilities, to engage the customer selectively through appropriate
channels and to develop a dialogue which maximises the capabilities and
speed of the new media communications. What is really required is not a
‘revolution’ but, with the understanding of the market dynamics,
marketers need to use their imagination, attempt to think laterally and not
be afraid to experiment.
Case histories This book also contains some useful case histories from such
companies as IBM, Unilever, the Vehicle Licensing Agency, Finnair and
of course the mandatory Tesco. The cases tend to highlight companies
which have attempted part or all of the new agenda. As an introduction to
the changes happening in the marketing departments of the more
enlightened companies I would recommend this book. But I am left with
a feeling of the need to engage with customers on the customer journey,
develop a smart, agile dialogue with them while at the same time
integrating marketing into the core business and its functions. How
exactly I do this is another issue and perhaps another book.

Derek Holder MD, IDM

Who Let the Blogs Out? A Hyperconnected Peek at the

World of Blogs
Biz Stone
St Martin’s Griffin, 2004; 244pp; paperback; £5.84
ISBN: 0-312-33000-6
It doesn’t slow down, this digital stuff. While you were still getting the
company website up people started telling you about web advertising. By
the time you’d started on your banners, viral marketing had become all
the rage. Just as you were getting ready for your first viral, search engine
keywords became the new customer acquisition tool. In the midst of
building your keyword lists, metrics and analysis came into vogue. And
now it’s happened again: blogs are another you can’t put off any more.
A light read and a The good news is that spending a couple of hours in the company of
good start on a tidal Biz Stone and his new light read Who Let the Blogs Out? will give you a
wave good start — and as a simple orientation it’s probably all you need.
What began as a trickle of personal homepages a few years ago has
become a tidal wave of personal publishing. A new blog launches into the
‘blogsphere’ (yep, it really is called that) every second. What are they?
Imagine a fusion between personal homepages, microsites, chats in the
pub and an old-style ‘Dear Diary’. These are the voices of millions and
millions of people, all chatting and all connected. With the cost of starting
up now zero, and the content management tools something you’d have
been charged thousands for just a few years before, this is also the new
entry point for anyone wanting a webpage.

372 & PA L G R AV E M A C M I L L A N LT D 1 7 4 6 - 0 1 7 4 / 0 6 $ 3 0 . 0 0 V O L . 7 N O . 4 PP 371–375. Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice
 Book Reviews

Why it matters So why does it matter to you? Well, if you are part of a micro-business
run without overheads, then it’s a great way to save money on your
website. But the real reasons you need to understand the blogging
explosion are way more profound than saving a few quid on your
advertising. Here’s a few to think about.

— Bloggers are talking about you already: google your brand and you’re
bound to find mentions in some blogs. If it hasn’t happened yet then
give it another few months and they’ll be there. (They’re also talking
about your competitors, by the way, and you might like to see what
the verdict is.)
— Some of the people in your organisation probably have blogs: like it
or not they’re free thinkers and at some point may talk about your
firm. You may like the idea, you may be terrified of the idea, but
being ignorant of it is pointless.
— Your brand could be blogging as well. It’s a new communications
channel marketers can harness and include within their wider mix.
You may even be able to post on other people’s blogs, because that’s
how this community works — though my plea is that you get real
smart and are then real sensitive about the etiquette of these personal
spaces before you go near any of that.
— And blogging is now going mainstream (think about Google and
Messenger if you’re trying to get a handle on the scale of what that
means).

A new marketing If that’s not enough then try this: the attitudes your customers have will
landscape undergo another seismic shift as they wise up to blogs. The new
hyperconnected world has enabled an explosion of conversations. Harness
these with the instant ability to discover information about anything at the
click of a search engine, and you have a radically new landscape for
marketing. If your messages are not accurate, your brand promises not
fulfilled, your products not matching expectations, then it’s not one
customer you’re losing any more, it could be all of them!
On the bright side, if you have something useful to say then you can
use blogs to draw your customers’ attention: you can create your own new
constant relationship channel.
The blog world, its So what Stone usefully does is provide a simple induction to the tools,
tools and etiquette the world, the etiquette and the role blogs are filling. It’s enough to engage
and familiarise you, without scaring the uninitiated into hurling their
laptops and marketing plans out of the window, and it’s insightful enough
to help the more web-savvy fill in some knowledge gaps. Anything that
demystifies the digital world is seriously good news and Stone’s
contribution ranks well.
You’ll discover how it all began, why it has ignited the interest of
millions, the scale of its growth and even how you can build your own
blog. You’ll find out why politicians and backpackers are turning to them,
why employees got fired for them and some important etiquette of
blogging (like never writing posts after a night at the pub!)

& PA L G R A V E M A C M I L L A N LT D 1 7 4 6 - 0 1 7 4 / 0 6 $ 3 0 . 0 0 V O L . 7 N O . 4 PP 371–375. Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice 373
Book Reviews

The implications and For the more sophisticated reader there’s a clear case why the social
challenges software behind blogs will have much wider implications on knowledge
management, intranets, market research and product development. You’ll
come away with useful insights into the challenges firms will soon have in
responding to this, but at the same time a confidence that there are some
smart ways through. Along with [Link] you’ll find
some other useful starting points.
So there you have it. An easy-going romp through another digital
channel that as a marketer you need to be aware of. What you do
afterwards is up to you and your imagination.

Danny Meadows-Klue
Chief Executive, Digital Strategy Consulting

How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of

the Market
Gerald (Jerry) Zaltman
Harvard Business School Press, 2003; hardback; 323pp; £17.99
ISBN:1578518261
The customer mind Undertaking and applying market research is both art and science —
as a bridge from blending perspiration, interpretation and inspiration. Many marketers
research to purchase know to their cost that the bridge between research outcomes and
purchase behaviour is a difficult one to cross. It is the nature of this bridge
— the customer’s mind — that is the subject of this book.
The toughness and importance of the customer insight challenge makes
this book promising reading. A better understanding of how customers
think will surely help every market researcher and marketer. So is the
expectation (or in Zaltman’s model, the ‘anticipation’) fulfilled?
This is a book of two halves. It opens with some pretty unilluminating
definitions of such mind-boggling terms as ‘brain’, ‘thinking’, ‘thought’
and ‘concept’. Which is a shame, because there are some thought-
provoking (if not new) nuggets that are worth persisting for.
A stimulating first The first few chapters present an assemblage (albeit narrow and
half. . . skewed) of analyses and constructs of how people think. Through
metaphors, consensus, storytelling, imaging and the dominant role of our
subconscious, our conscious thoughts and actions are shaped. It is these
early chapters that are the more stimulating.
. . .lacking practical Understanding those building blocks of ‘thinking’ should help
follow-up marketers to strengthen advertising communications, build better brands
and develop deeper customer relationships. But the author’s attempts to
derive practical applications from these fail. Bland checklists are
presented on ‘how to be creative’ and ‘launching a new mind-set’. For
example, just what do the following ten ‘crowbars’ for creative thinking
do for you?

— Favour restlessness over contentment.

— Wonder about the cow’s crumpled horn.

374 & PA L G R AV E M A C M I L L A N LT D 1 7 4 6 - 0 1 7 4 / 0 6 $ 3 0 . 0 0 V O L . 7 N O . 4 PP 371–375. Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice
 Book Reviews

— Play with accidental data.

— View conclusions as beginnings.
— Get outdated.
— Stop squeezing the same baby chicken.
— Nurture cool passion.
— Have the courage of your convictions, not someone else’s.
— Ask generic questions.
— Avoid premature dismissal.

Anticlimax Chapter 12 is simply an anticlimax. Entitled ‘Quality questions beget

quality answers’, its 20 or so pages provide little in the way of new ideas
or insight for even the moderately competent market researcher.
Perhaps the best purpose served by this book is to remind us how
complex the human mind is — and the difficulty marketers will continue
to have in truly understanding customer perceptions and motivations, let
alone in predicting their likely behaviour.
Try Susan Greenfield One resonant statement is that marketers ‘can find more knowledge
about consumers outside the marketing discipline’. While the author
limits his qualification of this statement to the fact that ‘market research
provides only a small part of available knowledge about customers’, it
reminds us there is a wealth of valuable marketing insights to be found in
the works of neuroscientists such as Susan Greenfield et al.
Ninety-five per cent of thought, emotion and learning occur in the
unconscious mind. Only 5 per cent of what we do occurs in the high-order
consciousness. Understanding customers requires an intimate level of
empathy. A brand is built not through isolated marketing messages, but
against a complex backcloth of — mainly subconscious — contexts and
inputs.
The reconstructive nature of memory should also be of great interest
(concern!) to marketers. Having spent your ad budget telling customers
how great your brand is, you’re then left at the mercy of their memory (to
remember it ‘their way’). Constant reinforcement and support of the
brand message is vital, using all the building blocks. ‘Filling in the gaps’
and ‘perception by consensus’ are another two liberties of the free mind
that marketers and researchers must also do battle with!
Some interesting Every now and again, but not nearly frequently enough, an illuminating
case stories case story provides a handle back on reality and application for some of
the ideas. But even many of these will be anodyne to the erudite marketer.
So let’s conclude with Chapter 13, which opens to the quote: ‘Few
occasions intimidate and excite us as much as beginnings.’ The corollary
to which is that endings are a let down. Unfortunately, this book is hardly
‘out of the box’ on that one.

Neil Morris F IDM

& PA L G R A V E M A C M I L L A N LT D 1 7 4 6 - 0 1 7 4 / 0 6 $ 3 0 . 0 0 V O L . 7 N O . 4 PP 371–375. Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice 375