The Guru Guide to Marketing
by Joseph Boyett and Jimmie Boyett
Peter Drucker, the guru of all management gurus, once wrote that marketing was the
distinguishing, unique function that set businesses apart form all other human
organizations. As a business person, you know how important the marketing
function is to the success of any business. You also know that marketing is in the
throes of change. The Internet has altered the dynamics of customer and business-
to-business relations. Regardless of medium, advertising doesn’t seem to work quite
as well as it once did. Once strong brands seem to be less potent. Of course there is
no shortage of explanations for what is happening to marketing and advice for
remedying its ills. Amazon.com lists over 13,000 books on marketing and a search on
Google.com yields over 22 million Internet sites devoted to the topic. There in lies the
problem.
If you are like most people, you simply have too much to do and too little time to sift
through hundreds of books, thousands of articles and millions of web sites on
marketing to uncover the latest trends and revelations. Which books should you
read? What articles could provide you with insight into emerging marketing issues?
Whose writings should you seek on the Internet and in your library? Who are the
leading authorities on brand management, customer relationship management, and
other hot marketing topics? What advice do they give? How do the ideas of one
authority complement or conflict with those of another? You need a guide to answer
these questions. Congratulations. You have just found it.
This Guru Guide to Marketing has been designed to provide you with a clear, concise
and informative digest of to the best thinking about marketing in the new global, high-
tech world of business. You are holding in your hands a highly opinionated but
informative guide to ideas of the world’s top marketers and marketing consultants.
Like the original Guru Guide (Wiley, 1998), we have designed this Guide to be more
than just an overview of current thinking. We go further to link and cross-link the
ideas to show where the experts agree and disagree. We show how the gurus’
ideas have evolved. Finally, we provide an evaluation of their strengths and
weaknesses.
OUR GURUS
In selecting our gurus, we began by making a list of established marketing gurus such
Philip Kotler, Ted Levitt, and so on who have dominated marketing thinking for
decades. Then, we went looking for the new comers. We browsed the online and
offline bookstores. We consulted the marketing journals both popular and academic.
We cruised the Internet. We searched for those who were making a splash with new
marketing ideas. What journal articles and books on marketing were people reading
and talking about? Who did the popular media—TV, radio, business periodical—cite
on emerging marketing issues? Who was widely recognized as THE marketing
authority? Who was getting recognized? Who was being quoted? Who’s ideas were
being discussed? Who’s were being cussed?
Because the economy and marketing’s challenges have changed so dramatically in the
last few years, we focused our search primarily on the most significant books and
articles that had been published over the last three years. We checked the best-
seller lists to see what people were reading, and we asked our friends, clients, and
associates to recommend people they thought had unique marketing insights. We
ultimately narrowed our list down to the 58 gurus listed here.
Harry Beckwith, author of Selling the Invisible and The Invisible Touch
Robert Blattberg, co-author of Customer Equity
Neil H. Borden, author of The Economic Effects of Advertising
Marc Braunstein, author of Deep Branding on the Internet
Darren Bridger, co-author of The Soul of the New Consumer
Stephen Brown, author of Marketing—the Retro Revolution
Kevin J. Clancy, co-author of Counterintuitive Marketing
Steven Cristol, co-author of Simplicity Marketing
Adam Curry, co-author of The Customer Marketing Method
Jay Curry, co-author of The Customer Marketing Method
Frank Davis, co-author of Customer Responsive Management
Scott Davis, author of Brand Asset Management
George S. Day, author of The Market Driven Organization
Laura Day, author of Practical Intuition for Success
Frank Delano, author of The Omnipowerful Brand
Raymond D. Frost, co-author of Marketing on the Internet
Gary Getz, co-author of Customer Equity
Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point
Marc Gobé, author of Emotional Branding
Seth Godin, author of Permission Marketing
Ian Gordon, author of Relationship Marketing
Robert Hisrich, author of Marketing
Arthur Hughes, author of Strategic Database Marketing
Guy Kawasaki, author of Rules for Revolutionaries
Duane Knapp, author of The Brand Mindset
Philip Kotler, author of Kotler on Marketing
Peter C. Kreig, co-author of Counterintuitive Marketing
Jesper Kunde, author of Corporate Religion
K. C. Lee, co-author of Hi-Tech Hi-Touch Branding
Katherine Lemon, co-author of Driving Customer Equity
Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Mastering Guerrilla Marketing
Theodore Levitt, author of The Marketing Imagination
David Lewis, author of Soul of the New Customer
Karl Manrodt, co-author of Customer Responsive Management
Chuck Martin, co-author of Max-e-Marketing in the Net Future
Regis McKenna, author of Real Time and Relationship Marketing
Mary Modahl, author of Now or Never
Adam Morgan, author of Eating the Big Fish
Frederick Newell, author of Loyalty.Com
Don Peppers, co-author of The One-to-One Future
Faith Popcorn, author of EVEolution
Stan Rapp, co-author of Max-e-Marketing in the Net Future
Frederick Reichheld, author of The Loyalty Effect
Martha Rogers, co-author of The One-to-One Future
Emanuel Rosen, co-author of The Anatomy of Buzz
Roland Rust, co-author of Driving Customer Equity
Don E. Schultz, author of Integrated Marketing Communications
Evan I. Schwartz, author of Digital Darwinsim
Peter Sealey, co-author of Simplicity Marketing
Judy Strauss, co-author of Marketing on the Internet
Paul Temporal, co-author of Hi-Tech Hi-Touch Branding
Jacquelyn Thomas, co-author of Customer Equity
Daryl Travis, author of Emotional Branding
Jack Trout, author of Differentiate or Die
Lars Tvede, author of Marketing Strategies for the New Economy
Fred Wiersema, author of The New Market Leaders
Valarie Zeithaml, co-author of Driving Customer Equity
Sergio Zyman, author of The End of Marketing as We Know It
Our gurus are drawn from leading research and teaching centers such as the Harvard
Business School, the London Business School, the Wharton School of the University of
Pennsylvania, and the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern
University. Our gurus also represent some of the world’s largest and best-known
management consulting firms, including Forrester Research. And, they include
marketing pioneers in the high-tech industry such as Seth Godin of Yahoo!
Our gurus are the best and/or most popular marketing writers and thinkers. You won’
t agree with everything they have to say—we don’t either—but we are confident that
they will stimulate your thinking, point you in new directions, and challenge many of
your best-loved assumptions about what is wrong with marketing and how it can be
fixed.
ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK
We have designed this book to be your reference manual to the current challenges
marketing faces. It is organized around key marketing issues. We cover each issue
in a separate chapter and present a summary of the best thinking of a panel of new-
economy gurus about that issue. We show where the gurus agree and disagree.
When our gurus offer different approaches—such as a different sequence of steps to
follow in addressing an issue or solving a problem—we use tables, charts, and
exhibits to illustrate the similarities and differences.
We have organized our gurus’ ideas into six chapters.
Chapter 1: The Future of Marketing provides an overview of some of the most critical
challenges our gurus say marketers face today including the increasing difficulty in
creating relevant and distinctive product differentiation, the impact of the Internet on
consumer/business and business to business relations, the declining effectiveness of
advertising, and attacks on traditional pricing schemes.
The five remaining chapters of The Guru Guide to Marketing cover five different
approaches our gurus offer to address the marketing’s problems and challenges.
Chapter 2 & 3: All You Need is a Brand and All You Need is Brand Management
present the arguments a vocal group of gurus make for addressing marketing’s
problems though improved brand management. Among other things we cover our
gurus’ recommendations for improved product postioning and building a strong
brand.
Chapter 3: All You Need is a Customer Relationship covers one of the hottest
marketing topics of the day—Customer Relationship Management (CRM). We examine
what our gurus say is the key concept underlying CRM and its principal advantages
over other approaches to marketing, such as branding; four steps our gurus say
companies should take to implement CRM, how they say companies must reorganize
the marketing function and the company in general to make CRM work; and, key
questions they say you should ask to determine if CRM is right for your company.
Chapter 4: All You Need is Customer Equity presents the arguments of another group
of marketing gurus who say that neither branding nor Customer Relationship
Management offer a real cure for marketing’s ills. Instead they say companies should
treat customers as financial assets and marketers should focus their efforts on
building what the gurus call “Customer Equity.” In this chapter, we compare and
contrast two competing approaches that our gurus offer to both measuring and
building Customer Equity.
In Chapter 5: All You Need is Buzz we present the arguments of a fourth group of
gurus who say that the key to solving marketing’s problems isn’t more branding or
relationship and equity building but rather just more “word-of-mouth” Buzz. We
explain why they say Buzz is critical now, the questions you should ask to determine if
you have a “buzzable” product or service, and the steps they say you should take to
create genuine street-level excitement and “infectious chatter” about your product or
company.
We conclude the book with an appendix in which we provide biographies for all of the
gurus, including in many instances postal addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail
addresses where they can be reached.
by Joseph Boyett and Jimmie Boyett
Peter Drucker, the guru of all management gurus, once wrote that marketing was the
distinguishing, unique function that set businesses apart form all other human
organizations. As a business person, you know how important the marketing
function is to the success of any business. You also know that marketing is in the
throes of change. The Internet has altered the dynamics of customer and business-
to-business relations. Regardless of medium, advertising doesn’t seem to work quite
as well as it once did. Once strong brands seem to be less potent. Of course there is
no shortage of explanations for what is happening to marketing and advice for
remedying its ills. Amazon.com lists over 13,000 books on marketing and a search on
Google.com yields over 22 million Internet sites devoted to the topic. There in lies the
problem.
If you are like most people, you simply have too much to do and too little time to sift
through hundreds of books, thousands of articles and millions of web sites on
marketing to uncover the latest trends and revelations. Which books should you
read? What articles could provide you with insight into emerging marketing issues?
Whose writings should you seek on the Internet and in your library? Who are the
leading authorities on brand management, customer relationship management, and
other hot marketing topics? What advice do they give? How do the ideas of one
authority complement or conflict with those of another? You need a guide to answer
these questions. Congratulations. You have just found it.
This Guru Guide to Marketing has been designed to provide you with a clear, concise
and informative digest of to the best thinking about marketing in the new global, high-
tech world of business. You are holding in your hands a highly opinionated but
informative guide to ideas of the world’s top marketers and marketing consultants.
Like the original Guru Guide (Wiley, 1998), we have designed this Guide to be more
than just an overview of current thinking. We go further to link and cross-link the
ideas to show where the experts agree and disagree. We show how the gurus’
ideas have evolved. Finally, we provide an evaluation of their strengths and
weaknesses.
OUR GURUS
In selecting our gurus, we began by making a list of established marketing gurus such
Philip Kotler, Ted Levitt, and so on who have dominated marketing thinking for
decades. Then, we went looking for the new comers. We browsed the online and
offline bookstores. We consulted the marketing journals both popular and academic.
We cruised the Internet. We searched for those who were making a splash with new
marketing ideas. What journal articles and books on marketing were people reading
and talking about? Who did the popular media—TV, radio, business periodical—cite
on emerging marketing issues? Who was widely recognized as THE marketing
authority? Who was getting recognized? Who was being quoted? Who’s ideas were
being discussed? Who’s were being cussed?
Because the economy and marketing’s challenges have changed so dramatically in the
last few years, we focused our search primarily on the most significant books and
articles that had been published over the last three years. We checked the best-
seller lists to see what people were reading, and we asked our friends, clients, and
associates to recommend people they thought had unique marketing insights. We
ultimately narrowed our list down to the 58 gurus listed here.
Harry Beckwith, author of Selling the Invisible and The Invisible Touch
Robert Blattberg, co-author of Customer Equity
Neil H. Borden, author of The Economic Effects of Advertising
Marc Braunstein, author of Deep Branding on the Internet
Darren Bridger, co-author of The Soul of the New Consumer
Stephen Brown, author of Marketing—the Retro Revolution
Kevin J. Clancy, co-author of Counterintuitive Marketing
Steven Cristol, co-author of Simplicity Marketing
Adam Curry, co-author of The Customer Marketing Method
Jay Curry, co-author of The Customer Marketing Method
Frank Davis, co-author of Customer Responsive Management
Scott Davis, author of Brand Asset Management
George S. Day, author of The Market Driven Organization
Laura Day, author of Practical Intuition for Success
Frank Delano, author of The Omnipowerful Brand
Raymond D. Frost, co-author of Marketing on the Internet
Gary Getz, co-author of Customer Equity
Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point
Marc Gobé, author of Emotional Branding
Seth Godin, author of Permission Marketing
Ian Gordon, author of Relationship Marketing
Robert Hisrich, author of Marketing
Arthur Hughes, author of Strategic Database Marketing
Guy Kawasaki, author of Rules for Revolutionaries
Duane Knapp, author of The Brand Mindset
Philip Kotler, author of Kotler on Marketing
Peter C. Kreig, co-author of Counterintuitive Marketing
Jesper Kunde, author of Corporate Religion
K. C. Lee, co-author of Hi-Tech Hi-Touch Branding
Katherine Lemon, co-author of Driving Customer Equity
Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Mastering Guerrilla Marketing
Theodore Levitt, author of The Marketing Imagination
David Lewis, author of Soul of the New Customer
Karl Manrodt, co-author of Customer Responsive Management
Chuck Martin, co-author of Max-e-Marketing in the Net Future
Regis McKenna, author of Real Time and Relationship Marketing
Mary Modahl, author of Now or Never
Adam Morgan, author of Eating the Big Fish
Frederick Newell, author of Loyalty.Com
Don Peppers, co-author of The One-to-One Future
Faith Popcorn, author of EVEolution
Stan Rapp, co-author of Max-e-Marketing in the Net Future
Frederick Reichheld, author of The Loyalty Effect
Martha Rogers, co-author of The One-to-One Future
Emanuel Rosen, co-author of The Anatomy of Buzz
Roland Rust, co-author of Driving Customer Equity
Don E. Schultz, author of Integrated Marketing Communications
Evan I. Schwartz, author of Digital Darwinsim
Peter Sealey, co-author of Simplicity Marketing
Judy Strauss, co-author of Marketing on the Internet
Paul Temporal, co-author of Hi-Tech Hi-Touch Branding
Jacquelyn Thomas, co-author of Customer Equity
Daryl Travis, author of Emotional Branding
Jack Trout, author of Differentiate or Die
Lars Tvede, author of Marketing Strategies for the New Economy
Fred Wiersema, author of The New Market Leaders
Valarie Zeithaml, co-author of Driving Customer Equity
Sergio Zyman, author of The End of Marketing as We Know It
Our gurus are drawn from leading research and teaching centers such as the Harvard
Business School, the London Business School, the Wharton School of the University of
Pennsylvania, and the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern
University. Our gurus also represent some of the world’s largest and best-known
management consulting firms, including Forrester Research. And, they include
marketing pioneers in the high-tech industry such as Seth Godin of Yahoo!
Our gurus are the best and/or most popular marketing writers and thinkers. You won’
t agree with everything they have to say—we don’t either—but we are confident that
they will stimulate your thinking, point you in new directions, and challenge many of
your best-loved assumptions about what is wrong with marketing and how it can be
fixed.
ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK
We have designed this book to be your reference manual to the current challenges
marketing faces. It is organized around key marketing issues. We cover each issue
in a separate chapter and present a summary of the best thinking of a panel of new-
economy gurus about that issue. We show where the gurus agree and disagree.
When our gurus offer different approaches—such as a different sequence of steps to
follow in addressing an issue or solving a problem—we use tables, charts, and
exhibits to illustrate the similarities and differences.
We have organized our gurus’ ideas into six chapters.
Chapter 1: The Future of Marketing provides an overview of some of the most critical
challenges our gurus say marketers face today including the increasing difficulty in
creating relevant and distinctive product differentiation, the impact of the Internet on
consumer/business and business to business relations, the declining effectiveness of
advertising, and attacks on traditional pricing schemes.
The five remaining chapters of The Guru Guide to Marketing cover five different
approaches our gurus offer to address the marketing’s problems and challenges.
Chapter 2 & 3: All You Need is a Brand and All You Need is Brand Management
present the arguments a vocal group of gurus make for addressing marketing’s
problems though improved brand management. Among other things we cover our
gurus’ recommendations for improved product postioning and building a strong
brand.
Chapter 3: All You Need is a Customer Relationship covers one of the hottest
marketing topics of the day—Customer Relationship Management (CRM). We examine
what our gurus say is the key concept underlying CRM and its principal advantages
over other approaches to marketing, such as branding; four steps our gurus say
companies should take to implement CRM, how they say companies must reorganize
the marketing function and the company in general to make CRM work; and, key
questions they say you should ask to determine if CRM is right for your company.
Chapter 4: All You Need is Customer Equity presents the arguments of another group
of marketing gurus who say that neither branding nor Customer Relationship
Management offer a real cure for marketing’s ills. Instead they say companies should
treat customers as financial assets and marketers should focus their efforts on
building what the gurus call “Customer Equity.” In this chapter, we compare and
contrast two competing approaches that our gurus offer to both measuring and
building Customer Equity.
In Chapter 5: All You Need is Buzz we present the arguments of a fourth group of
gurus who say that the key to solving marketing’s problems isn’t more branding or
relationship and equity building but rather just more “word-of-mouth” Buzz. We
explain why they say Buzz is critical now, the questions you should ask to determine if
you have a “buzzable” product or service, and the steps they say you should take to
create genuine street-level excitement and “infectious chatter” about your product or
company.
We conclude the book with an appendix in which we provide biographies for all of the
gurus, including in many instances postal addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail
addresses where they can be reached.
Joseph Boyett, Author & Consultant
 | |  | |  | |  | |  |
