Kick-Ass Business & Marketing Secrets: How to Blitz Your Competition

Preface

Despite its title, this Preface is a total after thought. I dictated it well after the book was completed, while relaxing after a lovely massage and a couple of glasses of red wine. It is amazing just how clearly one can see this mysterious subject of marketing when one is in a totally objective state.

Although the world has been changing frenetically since advertising began, traditional marketers and advertisers have stuck to strategies based on four tried-and-true laws: brand awareness to create recall and drive sales, the attributes of the product, the price, and satisfied customers. In fact, research shows that some 87 percent of all marketing and advertising is focused on either one or a combination of these four elements.

Yet advertising and marketing effectiveness has decreased dramatically over the past decade. In fact, Bob Kuperman, CEO of advertising agency Chiat Day, was quoted in a Time magazine article claiming that “95 percent of all advertising does not work.” Although this might seem to be an exaggerated generalization, this research was supported by numerous other studies—including the Levi study in England—all of which produced advertising failure rates of 87 to 95 percent.

What? So 95 percent of what we're doing doesn't work . . . and we keep doing it?

Studies in 2002, conducted by the University of Toronto, even throw some serious doubts on the long-held, widely accepted “fact” that repetition increases an advertisement's effectiveness. The university's ...