Building Brandwidth: Closing the Sale Online - Hardcover

Zyman, Sergio; Miller, Scott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0066620600 ISBN 13: 9780066620602

Publisher: Harper Business, 2000

Synopsis

Now the world's most famous marketer, Sergio Zyman, has teamed up with Scott Miller to present a brilliant and irascible take on e-marketing as it really is and how it's supposed to be.
just as Zyman's best-selling The End of Marketing as We Know It signaled the end of traditional marketing-marketing as corporate ornamentation, somehow existing apart from the serious business practice of selling more people more stuff more often-Building Brandwidth takes on the myth that this cool, hip new technology needs cool, hip new marketing to make the sale. Marketing is marketing-building a brand online takes discipline and sweat, just as it does offline.
Too many Internet start-ups are betting on irreverent advertising and in-jokes to do magic-to create instant brand awareness, build traffic, develop commerce, create buzz, and enable the brand to rise to the top. But "irreverent" too often means "irrelevant." Meanwhile, sales stagnate-or nosedive. Ever since the Internet bubble burst, Web companies live by the law-of-the-jungle rules of all companies.

In this illuminating book you'll learn why:

• Building brandwidth isn't about being trendy. It's about closing the sale online and using some of the back-to-the principles of e-merchanting to do that.

• Everything you knew about mass marketing is over. Today, customization rules, and that means customer-ization rules.

• Customers don't care if your Web site has the coolest technology-they want to know how it can do something for them that they need or want and how it can do it differently than any other site.

• Creativity isn't about being obscure. Creativity means doing the hard work of communicating what your business can do that the competition can't.

• What applies to e-companies now applies to all companies. The new and old economies have fused into one hypercompetitive transformed economy.

Building Brandwidth is the user's manual for anyone doing business on the Internet. This indispensable guide to making money and coming out on top will help you close the sale online in these fast-moving, make-or-break times when every e-commerce venture is desperately fighting to stay afloat.

About this title

About the Authors

Sergio Zyman was formerly the chief marketing officer at The Coca-Cola Company. As principal of Z, a new consulting company, he has worked with such companies as Microsoft, 7-Eleven, Miller Brewing Company, and Campbells. A highly sought-after speaker, he frequently travels the world to speak to large audiences and has been featured in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Fortune. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Scott Miller is founder of the Sawyer-Miller Group, the largest and most successful political consultancy worldwide.

Reviews

The purpose of marketing is to sell productD"'selling stuff is what sells stuff'"Dand that doesn't change if you are in a traditional company or a dot-com, reminds Zyman (The End of Marketing As We Know It), a former chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola who now runs a consulting company he founded with Miller. What Zyman preachesDwith gusto and solid advice based on long experienceDis going back to the basics of building a brand. Readers should not dismiss his revved-up, disarmingly hip tone (aimed at dot-com entrepreneurs under 35); his book is solid gold. The five key elements of building "brandwidth" (and, therefore, intrinsic value, which will attract investors) are, he says, brand presence (which rests on activating a brand in the marketplace); relevance ("Fixate on the customer, not on the product or the competition"); "owning the position of relevant differentiation in your marketplace"; credibility ("you can't deliver on customer satisfaction unless you clearly define the customer benefit in advance") and imagery ("Your brand is defined in your customer's perceptions"). Zyman is confident that "gazillions" of dollars are still to be made on the Web but that the "easy money" days are long over. For companies willing to do the critical work of marketing, he maintains, the sky's the limit. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0066620600
• ISBN 13: 9780066620602
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256