The Marketing Mavens | Noel Capon | Those who understand how to create or increase demand for...

The Marketing Mavens | Noel Capon | This is a Terrific Book

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The Marketing Mavens

	The Marketing Mavens Noel Capon Crown Business, 2007 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The way far too many people at far too many companies think about and execute marketing was born in an era when suppliers-the companies generating products and services-were in the catbird seat. That world is long dead, and customers now occupy that position. In this relentlessly globalizing economy, we live in a world of oversupply and underdemand, with too many suppliers chasing too few customers, offering more goods and services than the market can absorb.

Noel Capon set out to discover what differentiates people who know how to succeed in this changed world-people who are able to create customers for the products and services of their business.

The Marketing Mavens is based on a four-year-long research program that spanned twenty-five industries, identifying long-term winners and what they do differently. Put simply, Marketing Mavens place customers at the center of their business and make marketing everyone?s job. Using a wide variety of intriguing, in-depth examples, from ESPN to the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Capon shows how the mavens create customers. How by placing the sports fan at the center of its business, ESPN creates programming that meets the needs of fans that were never given a second thought by the networks; or how physicians at the Mayo Clinic, being both technical experts and skilled at creating a patient-centric ambience, motivate people to pay the extra travel and lodging expenses not covered by insurance.

Marketing Mavens, though a rare breed, can be found up and down an organization-from the CEO to chief marketing officers to business unit managers. Noel Capon has talked to mavens from across the global economy and brings forth their uncanny insights behind the five imperatives of the true Marketing Maven:

¥ Picking markets that matter
¥ Selecting segments to dominate and finding the sweet spot in that segment
¥ Designing the offer to create customer value and secure differential advantage
¥ Integrating to serve the customer
¥ And measuring what matters

Noel Capon in The Marketing Mavens redefines marketing, moving it from a focus on selling and communication into a discipline that guides all the key decisions of a business. By seeing marketing as everyone?s business-not the domain of a few specialists-you?ll get your business in step with the way the world really works . . . and start creating customers. Next year?s profits don?t depend on next year?s numbers but on next year?s customers. The Marketing Mavens points the way to those customers, profits, and an increased stock price.

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Those who understand how to create or increase demand for what is offered

Curious, I checked the origin of the word "maven" at the Online Etymology Dictionary and learned that it is derived from Yiddish word "meyvn," from Heb. "mebhin"; literally, "one who understands." That correctly describes the marketers at the exemplar companies that Noel Capon examines in this entertaining as well as enlightening volume. They include Amazon, Dell, ESPN, The Home Depot, Nestlé, Samsung Electronics, Starbucks, Target, Toyota, and UPS.

This is indeed a diverse group of companies. Also, the specific strategies and tactics employed by each to create or increase demand for what they offer (my preferred definition of marketing) significantly differ. However, according to Capon, they demonstrate the same five "linked imperatives" that all companies must follow:

1. Select only markets that matter.

2. Select those segments that can be dominated.

3. Design the offering for each market to create customer value while securing and sustaining a competitive (i.e. differential) advantage.

4. Fully integrate involvement to maximize value added to each customer.

5. Measure only what matters.

None of these is a head-snapping revelation, nor does Capon make any such claim. The great value of his book is to be found in his analysis of those exemplary companies in which, in ways and to any extent appropriate to their specific objectives and resources, these companies accommodate the five "linked imperatives." With brilliant skill, Capon explains how any other enterprise (regardless of its size or nature) can also accommodate the same imperatives while effectively fulfilling what Peter Drucker once asserted (in The Practice of Management, 1954) are the "two - and only two - basic functions: marketing and innovation...Marketing is so basic that it cannot [in fact] be considered a separate function...it is the whole business...seen from the customer's point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must, therefore, permeate all areas of the enterprise."

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad's Competing for the Future and Dean Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success.

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This is a Terrific Book

This is the best marketing book I've read in a long time. Capon delivers on his promise of who the big marketing mavens are and tells how they do it. He gives us five simple imperatives in marketing and in business and provides in-depth stories on how to achieve them. This is a well documented well written book---a worthwhile read for all marketers.

Reed Holden, CEO, Holden Advisors

Finally an up-to-the-minute viewpoint that is relevant and useful!

I was given this book by a member of our company's senior leadership in preparation for a national meeting. As usual I dreaded the thought of pounding through another book of things that I have already done in my 20 years in marketing. But much to my surprise this book explored parts of the business that need talking about and left alone the annoying "how to be a better marketer", entry-level dialogue that is so prevelant in books that cater to the lowest common denominator.

Marketing Mavens gets to the heart of the issue of creativity, innovation and true branding by addressing how marketing is viewed by senior leadership of companies. Too often marketing is siloed off as an expense item that produces sale support materials and does "communication" activites. This book bodly goes where marketers have wanted to go for decades and that is to have a proper place at the table in regards to strategic decisions that impact the reputation of the companies' brand to prospective customers, current customers and business to business customers (the internal sale).

Really great work and worth the read. I purchased a copy of this book for every member of my marketing team and for my senior leadership and it has opened up honest and robust dialogue about what we do well and areas for improvement.

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A most excellent book.

To get to the core of what works in marketing this book goes to the best performing marketers over the long-haul. The key is that they are not marketing the way they once were, because they are not thinking about marketing the way they once were. Excellent book and one of very few I've bothered to write a review for.

Another valuable text from Crown Business

Another valuable text from Crown Business. I was prepared for yet another academic view of "the old regular big companies." Yet Capon really does deliver an easy to read and very useful marketing analysis book. It is fascinating and useful to read how the very large companies like Samsung, Amazon, Vodaphone , Dell and Toyota made dramatic shifts in their market approach and learned from their customers. I was particularly interested in the steps SAP took to recover from the MySAP and E-City initiatives which resulted in their corporate messaging move away from the technology and toward customer benefits. Did you know Dell is now no. 2 in PC sales in China and is hurting Lenovo on their home turf? How about Oracle using the Oracle Technology network as their primary marketing channel, resulting in significant uptick in sales and a decrease in marketing expense? The author has done us all a great favor through his depth of research.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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