Marketing rules have been radically changed!

“Max-e-Marketing in the Net Future”
Stan Rapp & Chuck Martin
McGraw-Hill, 2001


“The power to navigate the world at the click of a mouse is a force that is transforming our lives. And little will be the same,” Businessweek Online declared in its March 22, 1999 issue. More than a year after that statement, the transformation in the way we work, play and do business continues at the speed of light.

Much has been written about e-commerce, and how it has transformed the way a corporation stores and retrieves information; the way it uses its resources, people and otherwise; and the way it is structured – from the stable hierarchical pyramid to quick response teams that are easily deployed.

Big corporations have published books to document their own responses to the new revolutionary demands of the net economy – one way to assure their stockholders that they have acquired a new agility and picked up speed in outsmarting competition and in responding to customer needs.

What you would have though is an inside view of a corporation in the process of transformation. Sometimes, you could relate to such changes; other times you couldn’t. However, if you are looking for models, these corporate biographies would really be valuable.

But, if you are looking for a wide-ranging view of what’s really happening in the marketplace, what the new rules of engagement are, what new trends have materialized at the quickly changing horizon, and which industry players have been successfully cresting the wave of change – there is one book you can begin with: “Max-e-Marketing in the Net Future: The Seven Imperatives for Outsmarting the Competition in the Net Economy.”

If old paradigms are not changed, they are enriched. It used to be, for example, that we distinguish between selling a “product” or a “service.” The book’s one imperative says: “Erase the line between product and service.” Brand equity has been the emphasis of many a global consumer firm. The authors recommend that you “add relationship equity to brand equity.” And here’s one that introduces a new dimension to Marshall McLuhan’s “medium is the message”: The “process is the message” – or, “the process is the product.” Look the book up for several options on how process surrounds, creates or adds to the product, with several success stories from renowned brands.

The book also dares violate certain rules. For instance, here is one recommendation that violates marketing – and even grammar – rules: Try “verb branding” – like “Amazoning,” which sells the process of ordering a book with one click, complete with a package tracking mechanism. This is actually antedated by “Sinclair It!” and “Xerox It” – but they refer to simple old 20th century tasks, like copying and painting. Nothing about surfing of the internet kind.

The book is organized according to the “seven imperatives” – and thus it is easy on the reader to choose which imperative takes his fancy first. If your present concern is outsourcing, your begin with Imperative 4: “Do as little as possible yourself – let others do the work for you.” Sounds like a recommendation to elevate job evasion to the level of art! Not really. Check that imperative.

Or, if you are reviewing your organizational structure to make it more marketing oriented, be surprised by this tip in Imperative 7: “Make business responsible for marketing and marketing responsible for business” – which is actually saying marketing will drive the entire enterprise.

Written by a tandem of a relationship marketing man and an online publisher/lecturer, the book gives two assurances to the reader. First, the analyses and insights in marketing come from an old hand in marketing and advertising, but who has acquired a new eye that makes sense of the information age.

Second, the environmental scan of the net economy and networked society is made by the unerring eye of one who has been tracking this “transformational force” since it strode into the scene before an unsuspecting and a largely unprepared corporate community.

Aside from overwhelming us with changes that gives you impression that you now live in a radically new world, the book gives valuable information – like a “walk through” of the evolution of the new marketing – from the 1970s to 2000s. (Yes, lifestyle-altering changes have happened in much less than 50 years!) Well, at the latter pages of the book is a URL Listing that will drive readers to lose no time in navigating the world – through the mouse.
Marketing gurus like Philip Kotler and Theodore Levitt might have equipped us with marketing principles, but they have not prepared us for this rapidly changing net economy where the rules have been turned upside down. The bad news is, if you are in marketing (and that means the entire business), what you don’t know can hurt you – real bad. Hang on then to the seven imperatives in this book. Your wish to get hold of this book might as well be a command.