In Barwise and Meehan’s seminal book, Simply Better, the authors laid the groundwork for the ideas developed in this more prescriptive handbook. Taking the thesis of the earlier work – that success comes not from an obsession with differentiation but rather with understanding of what consumers most want in a market and delivering it better than competitors – here is a set of principles that amount to a generic model of how to do it. It is a book that should be at the bedside of all CEOs, especially new ones who are in an ideal position to change things, and also marketing directors who, after all, should be responsible for implementing much of the book’s advice about understanding customer needs.
The model is described through forensically analysed examples and incisive questions at the end of each section. It has five parts, the most important being openness – a seemingly vague notion but perhaps the most important as none of the other principles can operate without it.
The other four principles are: offer the consumer a relevant promise; build trust and equity by delivering this promise; continuously improve the promise; and innovate beyond the familiar.
Each chapter examines what the principle means in practice, illustrating along the way just how difficult it is to execute continuously.
These are deceptively simple principles but it is in the analysis of how different companies succeed or fail to follow them that their profundity emerges. Most business books concentrate on providing answers – often to the wrong questions. Barwise and Meehan concentrate on the right questions. How many CEOs or CMOs could answer the following questions truthfully?
Can all your middle managers describe your customer promise? Can members of your senior executive team name the three things that undermine trust among your existing customers? Is your brand really the best option for customers? Have you embraced novel ideas that produced significant innovations beyond the familiar? Have your front-line staff asked uncomfortable questions or suggested improvements in your offering?
Barwise and Meehan have cut straight to the chase of what makes a successful company. Backed by an extensive array of references, the authors’ succinctness, clarity and directness in a text blissfully free of intellectual or academic pretentiousness make this book an excellent addition to the genre.
Justin Gibbons reads Beyond the Familiar, and finds that it preaches a gentle message of ‘beyond’ and a steady mantra of ‘familiar’.
Marketing is about belief systems. We understand the complex world of consumers and brands through a lens. And there are plenty of lenses out there: are you a Nudgite or an Ehrenbergian? Agencies use belief systems to distinguish themselves; it’s an oversupplied market and you’d better be able to prove you’re different from the guys next door. And where do you find this point of difference – in the latest thinking, right?
The effect of this is that agencies (of all flavours) are believers in zagging. Not for them the rules and regulations of textbook marketing. Which agency out there trumpets its claims to be ‘The Classic Agency – building your brand the time honoured way’?
Beyond the Familiar preaches a gentle message of ‘beyond’ and a steady mantra of ‘familiar’. Get the basics right and you can reap the rewards of stretch. Get this equation the wrong way round and you’ll be the brand with the experiential pop-up finance clinic in Tesco’s car park (real example, and a tough one to benefit from when your business is very publicly falling apart in the newspapers every day).
The book is successfully chunked into four sections for those of us who need a simplified road map, and it’s littered with examples and in-business stories, something so often lacking in the more ‘leading edge’ books out there. When you dig beyond the headlines, there is plenty of detail and a practical framework to pin to your office wall.
I would have enjoyed a bit more sizzle, though, and here’s the rub. The agencies miss out on the marketing fundamentals because the books and resources are all sausage. Who can forget Eating The Big Fish with its credo-sizzle, the ‘Seven Principles of Herd Marketing’? Or the flambéed Hey Whipple, Squeeze This? Those books were written by ex-ad men and make much better use of branding, clarity of proposition and nifty copy writing. Hmmm, makes you wonder who’s got it right after all.
Beyond the Familiar, Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan, John Wiley & Sons (2011), £17.99
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