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Remember the New Coke? A disaster, right? Or how about the commercial where "Mean" Joe Greene meets a little kid holding a bottle of Coke? A masterpiece, right? Wrong, on both counts. Sergio Zyman, who was the chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola, will tell you that while the New Coke nose-dived, it--and the subsequent reintroduction of Coke Classic--helped to reconnect people to the soft drink and revitalize a brand that was losing market share to Pepsi. And as for "Mean" Joe Greene, while people loved the ad, it wasn't doing what good marketing should do: sell product, which is what Zyman's book, The End of Marketing As We Know It, is all about. For Zyman, marketing is not an art, it's a business. "Marketing is a strategic activity and discipline focused on the endgame of getting more consumers to buy your product more often so that your company makes more money." He sees too many marketers who don't understand this point, who are too concerned about projecting image when they should really be focused on producing sales. Zyman peppers the book with stories about various campaigns at Coke as well as assessments of companies that get it, such as Starbucks and Southwest Airlines, to companies that don't, for example, Nissan and Levi's. He believes that the old-style marketing of Madison Avenue is dead, that it no longer has the "ability to move the masses," that in today's "consumer democracy" there are simply too many choices. Instead, marketers will have to focus on sales, conversion rates, targeting customers, and creating value for shareholders. The End of Marketing As We Know It is not a primer on how to do better marketing; rather, it's a reordering of priorities so that good marketing will be done in the first place. Recommended. --Harry C. Edwards Marketing today doesn't work. Or so says the "Aya Cola," Sergio Zyman, former marketing czar of Coca-Cola and quite possibly the most famous marketing gadfly in the world. Brilliant, irascible, unconventional, Zyman is best known for reinventing the Coca-Cola Company's marketing approach by spearheading the global launches of Diet Coke, New Coke, Classic Coke, Fruitopia, and Sprite. Now, in this brisk and revolutionary book, Zyman shows why old approaches to marketing have lost their fizz--and how to get a jump on the strateies that will work in the twenty-first century. Zyman explores such topics as: - Why feel-good marketing is pointless unless it results in sales
- Why marketing is a science not an art
- How a well-honed strategy is more important to success than what ads say
- And much more
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