What Were They Thinking?: Marketing Lessons I'Ve Learned from over 80,000 New-Product Innovations and Idiocies

In an alphabetical format, an advisor to several major companies offers pithy, funny lessons of good marketing gleaned from such spectacular, costly product failures as rabbit jerky, Crystal Pepsi, and Crackerjack breakfast cereal. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

YA-McMath has packed such a terrific amount of information into this small, easily read book that it could serve as a marketing text, although it is not organized or written as such. In fact, it is arranged alphabetically by subject headings, such as, for the letter G, "Go with the Flow," "Greasy, Gloppy and Glorious," and "Gulp!" (Sound like an adman's vocabulary?) The goofy arrangement is useless to researchers; its apparent intent is to organize somehow the broad array of business savvy the author has accumulated over the years. However, if every company with a new product to market had welcomed the honest advice McMath offers, some of the many failures he discusses might not have happened. He does note that the cost of bringing products to market makes it difficult for entrepreneurs to compete with large companies. Just the few pages on the inner workings of supermarket product "positioning" is invaluable in explaining what reaches the shelf and why. A good index saves the day for report writers. Useful not only for marketing and psychology students, but also for those studying market manipulation by advertisers.
Judy McAloon, Potomac Library, Prince William County, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.