Product Description

The book that changed marketing forever is now updated for the new millennium

In 1986, Marketing Warfare propelled the industry into a new, modern sensibility and a world of unprecedented profit. Now, two decades later, this Annotated Edition provides the latest, most powerful tactics that have become synonymous with the names Ries and Trout. New content includes in-depth analyses of some of the biggest marketing successes and blunders of the past two decades—including Volkswagen, Sony, Coca Cola, Budweiser, IBM, and McDonalds—along with annotated reproductions of winning and losing ads.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #166482 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Ingram
The authors of the bestselling Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, now compare marketing to war--where competition is the enemy and the customer is the ground to be won.

From the Back Cover

You've got your hands on one of the greatest marketing manuals ever written­­the classic that defines the strategies, plans, and campaigns of today's marketing battlefield. Marketing is war. To triumph over the competition, it's not enough to target customers. Marketers must take aim at their competitors­­and be prepared to defend their own turf from would-be attackers at all times. This indispensable guide gives smart fighters the best tactics­­defensive, offensive, flanking, and guerrilla. It's the book that wrote the new rules!

Praise For Marketing Warfare:

"By far the most valuable and exiting business book to come along in years."­­Glamour

"Had Coca-Cola only listened to Trout and Ries, it would have known that to tamper with the Real Thing would be to court disaster."­­New York

"Chock-a-block with examples of successful and failed marketing campaigns. . .Makes for a very interesing and relevant read."­­USA Today

About the Author

Al Ries is Chairman of Ries & Ries, an Atlanta-based marketing strategy firm. He is a legendary marketing strategist and the bestselling author/coauthor of eleven books on marketing. Ries writes a monthly marketing column for AdAge.com, and he is frequently quoted in major publications.

Jack Trout is President of Trout & Partners Ltd., where he supervises a global network of experts that apply his concepts and develop his methodology around the world. Trout is recognized as the world's foremost marketing strategist; his concept of "positioning" has become the world's #1 business strategy. Trout writes a bimonthly column for Forbes.com.

Ries and Trout are also the authors of the marketing classic Positioning.

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Customer Reviews

the war of marketing - alright!!!
I'm a big fan of these two authors - Al Ries and Jack Trout. Now, don't let the title of my review put you off; but it's just that I've read 4 books in the last week by the same author (Trout-Sama) and I'm honestly predicting what examples are coming up on the next line before reading them. They are all very much alike.

We understand that competition is fierce and that differentiation is a vital key - we learnt this in the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, we learnt this in Diff or Die, we learnt this again in Marketing War-Fare. I give this book 4 stars however, cause even though the theory is not entirely original, I did like some of the way they put things. I am a big fan of Sun Tzu's work - and the comparison of methods of war with methods of management and marketing. I'm sure a lot of ideas had been taken from this.

My advice to the world is that everyone asks more questions when reading books. Don't just listen to stuff that authors say. Read Ogilvy on Advertising - the best book in the world. He is a genius. I'm not just refering negaitively to Ries and Trout, I love their work. But let me quote them and you make up your own mind - 'The problem with marketing today is not just the lack of rules. The biggest problem of all is the failure to realize that one ought to have rules in the first place.'

Now, you make up your mind. If Marketing had clear rules - like for example, Accounting, Economics (I think this is what you both are suggesting) - then how bloody boring it would come. I mean come on. If there is one thing I have learnt during the last two years of business school it is that marketing is the most amazing subject as you just never know whats going to happen next. How someone will advertise a product, what campaign will happen next, who will be the next start-up, how your competitor will attack you. It's all amazing. Compare that to bloody accounting - what a joke. And you guys wanna bring in rules. It's ok to present an idea, but it's not ok in today's business world to proclaim to the entire world that marketing lacks rules, and that I HAVE A PROBLEM not understanding that rules should exist in the unique marketing world.

Ries and Trout, you are lucky to get 4 stars off me this time.

The ultimate strategy for the battle of minds
Marketing is war. The companies have to fight for customers and against each other. Thus the rules of military combat are fully applicable, Ries and Trout insist. That is why they use the ideas of the best military strategist ever known - Karl von Clausewitz - to show how to win a marketing war. And it seems pretty simple. However, only at first glance.

The authors give to a business strategist a set of tools to assess the position and the situation on the ground (which is minds of the actual and prospect clients) in accordance with two basic military principles:
- the principle of force: more money and human resources always come over less money and human resources
- the superiority of the defense: defensive strategy demands less money and resources to win the marketing combat.

After assessing the situation, a strategist chooses which type of marketing war to wage (so called "the strategic square"):
- defensive
- offensive
- flanking
- guerilla

Each type of war is in its turn determined by a set of strategic principles. Follow them and you are doomed to success. As simple as it gets. Just do ALL the things correctly.

The only problem is that you have to do correctly so many things while assessing the situation and choosing and waging the type of marketing war, that winning is becoming an art of itself, rather then a strictly defined set of rules. The case studies in the second half of the book show that even the best and the biggest companies often fail to deliver the positive results.

And the last, but not least: "A general can no more entertain the idea of fighting to the last man than a good chess player would play an obviously lost game", Clausewitz wrote. Admittedly, "no purpose is served by wasting resources to conserve egos. Better to admit defeat and move on to another marketing war", Ries and Trout add. I just cannot agree more on these statements.

kudos to gen. clausewitz
this book very well intimates that marketing is war. so to deal with a war, different tools are needed. offensive, defensive and guerrilla war are some of them. the book gives insight of the history of various gigantic companies and the testing conditions the came from. sectionwise coverage gives a reader liberty to read according to the industry of his interest.
though the book has been written in a military style, but fun to read. the principles of warfare also are feast to grab. looks very obvious but are very profound. simply a delicious book for voracious readers.