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Beyond the Brand
Book

Beyond the Brand

Why Engaging the Right Customers is Essential to Winning in Business

John Winsor
Kaplan Publishing, 2004
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Editorial Rating

8

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  • Innovative

Recommendation

Most marketing books discuss how marketers should relate to their customers. Some use a formal, objective approach to penetrate the wall that separates the service or product provider from the consumer. This book promotes a very different, softer "anthro-journalistic" tactic: learning consumers' desires by hearing their stories and reflecting those wishes in the product's design. This leads to giving the product its own stories to "tell" potential customers, in a mutual social network based on shared meaning. The idea borrows the power of the oral tradition from anthropology and applies it to word-of-mouth product promotion. Author John Winsor stresses listening and storytelling as ways for trained marketers to understand customers and sell to them. Although his treatise dips occasionally into slightly airy New Age sensibilities, Winsor's information on the flaws of focus groups and the importance of heartfelt, meaningful customer feedback tells a story of its own. Of course, applying a cultural anthropologist's perspective to marketing will work better for some businesses than others. getAbstract.com thinks this book will intrigue and possibly challenge marketers who want to break out of branding buzz and explore new ideas.

Summary

The Storytellers

In 1995, Nike decided to enter the very competitive golf market with its own balls, bags, shoes and golf clubs. The company found common ground with golfers by cultivating relationships with golf pros and top players to learn what they wanted. As players began to use its products, Nike inked a $100 million deal with Tiger Woods, a famous early adapter from within golf's social network. By 1999, the investment paid off; players began winning major tournaments using Nike gear. Once the company planted the seeds, the players responded to stories generated inside their own social network.

People like to tell and hear good stories, so imagine the impact of having your customers tell their friends compelling stories about your products. Storytelling has several roles in marketing. You can tell customers stories about how people have used your products to improve their lives or meet their goals. And, to put your product in the center of customers' concerns, you must hear their stories as well.

Ask your customers to be storytellers. To learn the real reasons they like your products or services, use a planned, research-oriented approach to eliciting their...

About the Author

In 1998 John Winsor started Radar Communications, a marketing consultancy using organic, bottom-up anthro-journalistic tools. In 1986, he founded Sports & Fitness Publishing, which he sold to Condé Nast and Emap in 1998.

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