I have just returned from traveling to the US. This gave me the opportunity to see the books that American marketers are buying. Even better, it gave me the time to read one or two of them.
The book that immediately caught my attention was 'Ageless Marketing' by David Wolfe and Robert Snyder
The sub-title of the book suggested that this is just what I was looking to read 'strategies for reaching the hearts & minds of the new customer majority' (e.g. consumers over the age of 40). An additional incentive to read the book was that it featured the results of 'Value Portraits' - a joint project between J Walter Thompson and Market Strategies.
Now I am sure that this book does contain many pearls of wisdom but the problem was trying to wade through the complex and lengthy text to find them. As I read the book I kept thinking 'so what does this mean to me as a marketer?’ What are you supposed to do with sentences like 'it is not only important - obviously - to avoid anti-being experience symbols but to draw on positive symbols to strengthen the mind-opening power of marketing communications’? Wow. How about this section heading 'Being Experiences: toward the last of the life for which the first was made'.
I am sure the writers of this book had great fun in putting it together and to have the chance of ridiculing some of their pet hates (mainly CRM and young marketers). What value it delivers to the reader is much, much harder to define. There is some passing reference to the Value Portrait research but it fails to show how this can be utilised by the operational marketer.
Maybe I will have another read at some stage to see if I am being overly critical.
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