Happy long weekend everyone! Given my recent post “Worried about Walmart“, I thought I’d toss out a really great book that probably every small business person should read. Or anyone engaged in trying to “market” products and services to other people. It’s called UnMarketing, written by Scott Stratten. His blog here.
A few thoughts:
A) It’s written in plain language with easy to understand examples.
B) His ideas are pretty practical and do challenge some of the myths and status quo approaches around advertising and marketing.
C) It’s pretty funny. Always nice in a book about marketing.
D) It just came out in paperback, and there’s a kindle version as well.
I read some reviews online at Amazon, just to make sure that I wasn’t feeding you guys a line of crap because I happened to enjoy the book. Of the 58 reviews, 47 were 5 stars…so other people agree with me. Worth your time.
He does tend to glorify Twitter a bit, and seasoned marketing professionals who already engage authentically with clients won’t find it as useful as the relative newcomer. That aside, it’s a great book for small business owners wanting to embrace some social and digital media, and rethink the practice of buying print/tv advertising designed to interrupt the consumer at whatever it is they were doing (like reading or watching TV!).
Seriously, I’m now paying for TV shows via iTunes (or watching them for free on the internet a few days after they run), simply to avoid the advertising. I’m catching the news on Twitter and Facebook instead of reading the paper and flipping through pages of useless advertising. Time for business to rethink marketing. Time to UnMarket.
seetheconnection 