What Were They Thinking?: Marketing Lessons You Can Learn from Products That Flopped by Robert M. McMath @ Rm60.00

Publisher: Three Rivers Press - 1999-07-15
Paperback | 256 Pages

Book Information:
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 !


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