UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging. [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

I was assigned this book by our talented marketing business unit. Though I agree with the astute (*) and (**) reviews here, I feel comfortable giving three stars since I accept the basic concept presented in the book. The author throws the golden rule at marketing (treat your customers the way you'd want to be treated) and sprays the familiar self-help pep-talk/pacifiers (you can do it! you're great! you can figure out how to make $ from Tweeter, really you can!) which simultaneously and all-too-briefly fires up and soothes the tired, overworked, overweight masses which are the well-oiled gears of the US economy. A virtual Icy Hot Balm on our frazzled brains.

The one egregious fallacy in this book is right up front, page 6: "You are an expert when you say you are one." Although in the next paragraph this muddy thinking is watered down by the self-contradicting "You don't become an expert by just telling people you're an expert- people tell you and then they tell others.", the damage (to the thinking reader) is done. If we really take this to its logical extreme, expertise just becomes a popularity contest. Although sometimes it seems we pick our leaders this way (thankfully not the current president), surely we don't want to live in a society where the "experts" are the ones which yell loudest or have the most fans.

Another basic premise I disagree with is whether doing something "which makes you feel ill" means that it's wrong and you should not do it. It might apply to cold-calling, but every one of us who's trained hard physically knows the nausea-inducing unpleasant moments, which can be good for the body and mind in the long run (sorry for the pun).

In most businesses, it's good to get out there and meet potential clients face-to-face. You get a chance to impress them in person, on the spot, and no social media tool will substitute for human contact and the verbal jousting that goes on during a real discussion (our brains evolved to respond best to those stimuli).

Un-marketing basically means "not traditional marketing". So the author wants you to build a follower base before you present your ideas and products to them, and presents some ideas and examples of how to go about doing so. This is not a bad premise. Unfortunately, the terrible humor (meant to sugar-coat the ideas in "entertainment") and the ongoing monologue with the footnotes significantly detracts from his delivery, at least to this reader. In fact, this book is at least memorable for having the most irritating, asinine footnotes ever. On top of that, his overly jocular, self-centered (to put it kindly) style is just not very professional and detracts from his message and helpful Twitter FAQs.

On the subject of his dominance of social media, or "expertise" if you will, let's do a little math. We want to ascertain the returns on his tweet binge. As of the writing of this review, the author has 77466 followers, quite an impressive number. To capture this audience however, he posted 66752 Tweets and follows 33786 accounts himself. One way to gain an idea of effort vs gain is to subtract the followed from followers (77466-33786) to eliminate the reciprocal follow-me-and-I'll-follow-you types (also begs the question whether one person can ever meaningfully "engage" with 33786 tweeters a day). That leaves us with 43680 followers. Divide his total Tweets by that number, and you get about one and a half Tweets posted to get one follower (or only two-thirds of a non-reciprocal follower per tweet). The caveat is that it apparently only takes him a few seconds per tweet. Still, many people unfollow users which tweet too many times a day, if they are interested in actually reading them and not just collecting points. It's just like spam filling up your inbox and obscuring the stuff you actually want to read and learn something important from.

To put things into perspective, let's consider Cristiano Ronaldo, a professional soccer player currently plying his trade in Spain (for those Americans who haven't heard of him, with apologies to the rest of the globe). While not as good-looking as the author (who compares himself to a GQ model, though with an ever-irksome footnote diluting the comment), CR has 1.488 Million followers, following only 50 and having 331 Tweets. And he's got a bit of talent and a day job.

Final example close to home: the ever-resilient and clever Conan O'Brian. 2.17 Million followers, following 1 (one) himself, 342 tweets. I like Conan's tweets. They are always witty, to the point, often funny, and he doesn't overdo it. But the real interesting bit is the one person Conan follows, a person named Sarah Slowik from Michigan. With 38K followers she seems only half the Tweeter the author is, but considering she's only following 460 (I feel that's a number one can actually follow and read daily) and made 1235 tweets, applying the above reasoning we get 30.8 non-reciprocal followers per tweet she made. Considering the author himself only had 0.65 nr followers/tweet, Ms. Slowik seems to be almost _50 times_ more efficient and effective in using this medium. Her description is very sweet and lacking in the self-aggrandizement that is all-too-often endemic to mouse-wielding males:"I love to smile and have fun in life. I think that anyone and anything can be forgiven and we should all just love and be." And she's the only one Conan himself follows. Maybe she should write a book- agents take heed.

Having just finished this book, I'm absolutely exhausted and bored to tears. I read on average one book per week on the subject of marketing and this week was UnMarketing. This week my wife listened to me moan about how this book was wasting my time.

Me: "I can't believe I'm reading this."
Wife: "Just stop it."
Me: "No, I have to finished it now that I've started it."
Wife: "What's the point? Just start another book"

And so on, all week long. I have this character flaw whereby I must finish any book I start.

Frankly the best part of the book is the fake / pseudo reviews on the back cover. But you can get them for free just by reading the book description here on Amazon.

This book is overly long and convoluted. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of a coherent framework. Most of the book discusses how cool Twitter is. The rest is punctuated with stories about going to McDonald's and of course there is the obligatory chapter about how great the Zappos customer service is.

Zappos? Really? This has to be the 13th marketing book I've read with a chapter about Zappos. Yawn. Surely there must be at least one other business out there with great customer service that ISN'T Zappos. (No offense to Zappos.)

It is hard to summarize this book since it wanders all over the place. Most of the time I was in disbelief and asking myself, "Is this really a book about marketing?" Right -- it's a book about UnMarketing. I guess he can write about anything he wants since he created his own category.

To summarize this book as best as I can: "Twitter is awesome because it lets you connect with other people for free. Traditional marketing is yucky and you should stay away from it. Just make some friends on Twitter and figure out how to monetize those relationships. Oh, and by the way, Zappos has great customer service and McDonald's makes a surprisingly good cup of coffee."

I feel bad giving this book such a bad review. Honestly I tried my best. You can accuse me of being a troll (convenient way to dismiss negative criticism) but in any event I can't get back the time I put into this book. The fact that I'm even wasting more time by writing this review makes me even angrier so I'll just stop here.

The new book UnMarketing from Canadian viral marketer and Twitter gadfly Scott Stratten takes the rules and purees them, Blendtec style.

Here's what makes UnMarketing an unusual, yet worthy use of your marketing education time:

UNpretentious
Unlike so many marketing books, Stratten doesn't overcomplicate the subject matter. He believes that common sense should prevail, and that UnMarketing success is rooted in the creation of everyday "wow" moments. His self-deprecation adds a hilarious, warm tone throughout.

UNstructured
Like Gary Vaynerchuk's Crush It, Stratten dictated some of the book, and it reads very conversationally. Also, there isn't a narrative or progression in the book, but rather a collection of 57 short observations, lessons, and anecdotes. For readers that consume material in bits and pieces, this format is ideal. You can easily read UnMarketing over time in 10 or 15-minute chunks.

UNafraid
Sacred cows are slaughtered in UnMarketing, both in the material and in the book's packaging. (The faux testimonials on the back of the book are priceless, including:
"This book is the greatest business book in the world, besides mine."
- Author who only gives testimonials for people who give him one in return
Stratten's rant against direct marketing - "People still teach courses on how to cold-call better! That's like finding a better way to punch people in the face" is one of the more memorable examples of his outlook.

UNderstandable
One of the most commendable aspects of this book is Stratten's gift for boiling down a marketing principle to its simplest form. His "Pull and Stay" advice; segmenting customers into barrels; platforming; social currency, and other concepts are instantly applicable to real world marketing challenges fitting a wide variety of circumstances. The examples and mini case studies he presents provide insights that leave you nodding your head and thinking you could adopt the same approaches.

UNsettling
Stratten has a knack for gaps. The two sections in the book on the Trust Gap and the Experience Gap are among the strongest in UnMarketing. Both are wake-up calls for marketers, and make the case that separating marketing from day-to-day customer experiences is an impossibility. Greg Verdino's excellent book MicroMarketing hits on similar themes. Stratten writes: "

The space between the best services, often what a new customer receives and the worst experience is what I call the Experience Gap. As a business owner your goal needs to be having no gap at all, optimizing every point of contact with your customer."

A tall order, to be certain.

UNdercover
The best parts of UnMarketing are when the author uses his own circumstances to make a point about the importance of people and customer experience. His tale of his switch of coffee loyalty from Tim Horton's to McDonald's is a documentary-style account of how real people perceive and are impacted by business details we all too often take for granted. Based on consistency of product, suitability of packaging, and convenience of location, Stratten shifted his daily coffee habit - to the tune of perhaps $30,000 in lifetime value, underscoring the ultimate importance of every customer acquisition or defection.

As you might expect, UnMarketing is not your typical marketing and business book. It's a boullabaise of advice and observations on social media, viral marketing, and customer experience, with a side order of social media how-to. There are a few sections devoted to the mechanics of Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and other social media operational specifics. Because they are relatively high level overviews, these aren't the strongest components of the book, and if you want details on Twitter or Facebook best practices, I recommend Kyle Lacy's Twitter for Dummies and Mari Smith and Chris Treadway's Facebook Marketing an Hour a Day.

But, if you're looking for an always-interesting, impactful, funny, practical book to get you excited about marketing again, you should pick up a copy of UnMarketing. Scott Stratten is a compelling character with panache and wit, and he puts these strengths to great use in his first book.