What Were They Thinking? - Softcover

Robert M. McMath; Thom Forbes

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081293203X ISBN 13: 9780812932034

Publisher: Crown Currency, 1999

Synopsis

Those ignorant of the mistakes of the past are bound to lose a lot of money.  That's why Bob McMath founded the New Products Showcase and Learning Center--a "Smithsonian for Stinkers," Business Week dubbed it.  There, executives from top corporations pay huge amounts of money to rummage through some 80,000 products gone awry.  Their mission: to avoid the misguided, expensive, and occasionally ludicrous mistakes that trip up even top companies.

In What Were They Thinking?, McMath shows you how to avoid such mistakes, with more that eighty marketing lessons he's learned  from his long experience with clods and clunkers.  As People magazine put it "McMath knows his goods--and his uglies, too"--and here he shows you how to:

  Steer clear of the number one killer of new products  (page 129)

  Develop a marketing campaign based on a "Significant Point of Difference"  (page 183)

  Take advantage of eight  "Hot Buttons for Success in the Millennium"  (page 101)

  Keep out of the "Buy-This-If-You're-a-Loser School of Marketing"  (page 28)

  Combat "Corporate Alzheimer's"  (page 4)

and much more !

About this title

Review:

What Were They Thinking?, by 30-year marketing industry veteran Robert McMath and journalist Thom Forbes, clearly spells out its cautionary contents in its subtitle: Marketing Lessons I've Learned from over 80,000 New-Product Innovations and Idiocies. The insightful suggestions for avoiding the extraordinarily damaging (or at least extremely embarrassing) commercial misstep, illustrated perfectly by tales of formidable foul-ups from days of yore, ensure that this trip down memory lane can be more than just a pleasure cruise. Nonetheless, it's simply fun to relive such agonies as Ben-Gay Aspirin, Rabbit Jerky, and of course, New Coke. --Howard Rothman

From School Library Journal:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown Currency
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 081293203X
• ISBN 13: 9780812932034
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256