Our Marketing Books

In our rapidly dwindling spare time, we like to get our thoughts and perspectives about marketing down on paper. Sometimes these our ideas turn into article and white papers—check our newsroom and Mzine for more of those. Other times, they become full-blown marketing books that reflect the thinking and tools that guide our work. In fact, between the two of them, two of our original founders Kevin Clancy and Peter Krieg have written seven marketing books, two of which were business best-sellers.

Here’s the story-behind-the-story and a brief blurb about each of our marketing books, from the most recent to the classics:

Your Gut Is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head: How Disciplined, Fact-Based Marketing Can Drive Extraordinary Growth and Profits
(Wiley, 2007)

We first had the idea for Your Gut Is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head after reading two Fast Company articles a couple years ago. One proclaimed "Acting on Intuition" as the number one trend that "will change the way we work and live in 2005." It went on to predict Malcolm Gladwell's new book Blink and its exploration of the "power" of intuitive decision making would sweep corporate America. All of a sudden, everyone seemed to be waxing poetic about the virtues of making decisions based purely on their intuition and gut instinct. We just couldn’t understand why intuition reigned supreme when study after study came back showing negative ROI results.

Your Gut Is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head, a 800CEORead’s Bestseller, takes readers through real-world cases and anecdotes to illustrate a different, research-and-reality-driven process for making critical strategic choices about a market target, positioning, product/service offering, media, and advertising. It also tackles the burning issues of winning over the sales force, marketing performance reviews, and intelligent marketing planning, in each case demonstrating what to do to eliminate any drag on performance. Throughout the book, we make it clear that marketing programs that return 20% or more on investment come from carefully balancing the emotional gut with the grounded head.

Market New Products Successfully Using Simulated Test Marketing Technology
(Lexington Books, 2006)
The inspiration for Market New Products Successfully came from our years working on new product introductions and relaunches of established brands. Innovation remains an arduous and painful process for many companies, doing untold damage to brands, profitability, and careers. Some have used line extensions to mitigate risk, but all too often they have ended up extending the core brand into oblivion. Others have used test markets to help gauge opinion before a national rollout, only to have competitors snatch ideas and undermine results. Given the problems with conventional approaches, it's not surprising that 90% of new products and services fail.

Enter Market New Products Successfully, the definitive guidebook for using simulated test marketing (STM), a technology that can help companies dramatically improve the odds of introducing a successful new product or service. The book examines why STM is important, what the differences are between the major systems, how to do a simulation, and what insights it offers a marketing plan. Every marketer wants to improve the financial outcome of the innovation process and Market New Products Successfully shows how marketing science tools can make this possible.

Finalist for Berry-AMA Book Prize for top marketing book!
Counterintuitive Marketing: Achieve Great Results Using Uncommon Sense
(The Free Press, 2000)

We worked on this book during the height of the dot-com frenzy when everyone was gunning for “eyeballs”, making decisions on the fly, and accepting it as a given that you can build a great brand in 90 days or less. We just couldn’t take it anymore after we heard one to many folks quote analyst Henry Blodget 1999 statement: "Unlike with other famous bubbles…the Internet bubble is riding on rock-solid fundamentals, perhaps stronger than any the market has seen before. Underlying the crazy price increases are the foundations of what could become the early 21st century's leading growth companies…Just because the Internet stock phenomenon looks like a bubble, it isn't a given that the bubble will burst." It was just so ridiculous.

Selected by the AMA as one of the top five marketing books in the past three years, Counterintuitive Marketing contrasts how marketing decisions are made today with how they should be made. All too often, excess testosterone compels senior managers to make decisions intuitively, instinctively, quickly, and, unfortunately, disastrously. Such was the case with most of the dot-coms and was the primary reason we believed (rightly as it turned out) Blodget’s prognostication was totally off base.

Giving equal treatment to targeting, positioning, product development, pricing, customer service, e-commerce, marketing planning, implementation, and more, the book offers counterintuitive ideas for building and introducing blockbuster marketing programs.

Visit www.counterintuitivemarketing.com for more on the book.

uncover the hidden power of television programming

Uncover the Hidden Power of Television Programming...and Get the Most from Your Advertising Budget
(Sage Publications, 1999)

Uncover the Hidden Power of Television Programming is a technical marketing book about a subject near and dear to our hearts—advertising performance.

The book demonstrates that television—even as non-traditional media are in the ascendancy—can be a much more powerful advertising vehicle than has ever been supposed. Long before “engagement” discussion became de rigueur as far as the media planning goes, original research by the late David Lloyd, the co-author, demonstrates the more involved viewers are in the program, the greater the impact of the advertising. As television audiences continue to fragment and commercial costs continue to rise, the book's message grows even more important to television advertisers.

simulated test marketing

Simulated Test Marketing: Technology for Launching Successful New Products
(Lexington Books, 1994)
Simulated Test Marketing was the result of years of research and development work Kevin Clancy dedicated to perfecting a model to help companies maximize performance of new or restage products. The book contains everything an intelligent marketer must know about this powerful tool. Using STM, companies can reduce the likelihood of new product failure by forecasting a new product's future quickly, accurately, and inexpensively—and learn how to optimize the marketing mix to improve performance.

Marketing Myths That Are Killing Business: The Cure for Death Wish Marketing
(McGraw-Hill, 1993)
Marketing Myths, a Fortune Magazine bestseller, still sits on the CEO's desk in some of America's largest and most prestigious companies. The story with this marketing book is we wanted to come up with an easy to read, funny book, with lots of great insights on how to avoid common marketing mistakes and pitfalls. Heralded by academics and businesspeople as humorous and concise, Marketing Myths overturns nearly 200 marketing myths that weaken the performance and profitability of American business.

The Marketing Revolution: A Radical Manifesto for Dominating the Marketplace
(Harper Collins, 1991)
The Marketing Revolution was our very first marketing book and is considered a classic. We still get calls from folks around the world saying they read or are reading this book and learning immensely from it. The book illustrates, with unconventional insights and counterintuitive reasoning, just how off-course most businesses are in their marketing campaigns, offering concrete advice on developing and improving every facet of a marketing program. Also features, in every chapter, "The Bottom Line—What a CEO Wants To Know."

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