Simplicity Marketing : End Brand Complexity, Clutter, and Confusion

Rating:
Summary: Keep It Simple Whenever and Wherever Possible
Review: "Simplicity Marketing" rings particularly true in the most developed economies around the world. Businesses and consumers are often overwhelmed with the complexity of choosing goods and services available to them, many products are full of functions and features that only a small minority of users will ever utilize. To end the prevalent brand complexity, clutter, and confusion denounced above, Steven M. Cristol and Peter Sealey offer their audience four strategies called the 4 R's: Replace, Repackage, Reposition, and Replenish. Cristol and Sealey apply each of the 4R's to a multitude of situations in which the life of businesses and consumers can be made it easier at the profit of marketers cognizant of the importance of stress reduction, simplicity, and convenience. Cristol and Sealey correctly point out that only few companies are ultimately insulated from the 4 R's imperative. Cristol and Sealey also rightly draw the attention of their readers to the fact that the 4R's must be integrated into the brand and product strategy so that the product offered is perceived as part of the solution to the growing complexity of people's lives.

Rating:
Summary: Innovative Marketing
Review: An excellent resource for anyone deeply interested in marketing, considering a new business model, or developing a new product.

Finally, marketing professionals who will intelligently embrace and (with ease) outline "repackaging" and "replenishing" strategies. These sections made the book worth the price for me.

The only drawback(s) with the book (though I gave it a full 5 stars), are the case studies. Too many of the online grocers are performing poorly in the marketplace to rely on them as standards, whether or not their marketing strategies are exciting and workable.

Rating:
Summary: Adobe eBook Rip Off Alert!!!
Review: Caveat Emptor!

This eBook has NO flexibility built into it. What does this mean?
> you cannot print the eBook
> you cannot copy any text from the eBook
> you are required to download Adobe's eBook Reader (not to be confused with Acrobat. I was.)

Had I known the above, I would NEVER have downloaded it, but rather simply bought the book by mail!

Rating:
Summary: Adobe eBook Rip Off Alert!!!
Review: Even if you don't agree with the conclusions of the authors, this book is a 'must-read'! The authors lay out a very convincing argument for the validity of their 'Simplicity' approach to marketing, and the recommendations they make to encorporate the simplicity message in your own marketing, (or otherwise) plans are straightforward and well thought out. I have found the material to be compelling and easy to read, with just enough graphics to add value without clutter. (It seems that even while writing the book, the authors to care to embody the message through the medium!) The materials in the book can be applied to a number of areas in both business and personal life to increase your 'value', and I highly recommend this!

Rating:
Summary: Required reading material, definitely!!
Review: Even if you don't agree with the conclusions of the authors, this book is a 'must-read'! The authors lay out a very convincing argument for the validity of their 'Simplicity' approach to marketing, and the recommendations they make to encorporate the simplicity message in your own marketing, (or otherwise) plans are straightforward and well thought out. I have found the material to be compelling and easy to read, with just enough graphics to add value without clutter. (It seems that even while writing the book, the authors to care to embody the message through the medium!) The materials in the book can be applied to a number of areas in both business and personal life to increase your 'value', and I highly recommend this!

Rating:
Summary: Simplicity Marketing Delivers What It Promises
Review: Simplicity Marketing is a book that should have a mandatory place on every brand marketer's bookshelf. But it won't stay on the shelf long. . .it's too valuable as a guide on how to sell in the 21st century.

Steven Cristol and Peter Sealey have blended insightful brand concepts with street-smart practicality and devised a brilliantly straightforward methodology that is likely to become the weapon of choice for all brand marketers, regardless of the industry in which they compete. The Four R's is literally a formula for success, and an antidote at last for the confusion (among both buyers and sellers) brought about by overchoice and clutter in the marketplace. Just as valuable as the specific cases are the questions raised that should give pause to every marketer who may be shepherding an unnecessarily complex set of brand offerings.

Above all, Simplicity Marketing provides a lens through which smart marketers will view the world in order to rebuild broken brands, or provide accelerated momentum for those on the rise.

-- Lynn Upshaw, brand strategist. Author of Building Brand Identity, and lead author of The Masterbrand Mandate

Rating:
Summary: Clear and simple, the best advice
Review: There have been a lot of bad books written about marketing especially for technologists. This is the one shinning light in the category.

It is as much a thesis for life as it is for the way you run your marketing and sales worlds. Having read the book twice, once for practical and once for pleasure the book is an excellent combination of examples, ripe for metaphor and theory.

As a head of strategy for a leading e services company this book was well worth my time and the time of all our senior managers. The four "R's" are the best way to simplify a horribly complicated world.

If I could give six stars I would