What Were They Thinking? by Robert McMath

What Were They Thinking?

Marketing Lessons You Can Learn From Products That Flopped

Robert McMath

Crown · Print & ebook · June 29, 1999

Those ignorant of the mistakes of the past are bound to lose a lot of money.

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Who it’s for
Marketing lessons drawn from products that failed, with tactics for avoiding costly launch mistakes.
Themes
Marketing strategy, Product failures, Avoiding costly business mistakes
Genres
Marketing, Advertising & Promotion, Decision-Making & Problem Solving

About this book

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.

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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 !

Failed Product Lessons

Marketing lessons drawn from products that failed, with tactics for avoiding costly launch mistakes.

Come here for

  • More than eighty lessons drawn from products that went awry
  • Advice on product differentiation and marketing pitfalls

Expect

  • Examples of misguided, expensive, and occasionally ludicrous company mistakes
  • Guidance on avoiding new-product missteps

Where it sits

Marketing92%
Advertising & Promotion31%
Decision-Making & Problem Solving22%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Advertising & Promotion
  • Starting a Business
  • Marketing Research
Authors
Robert McMath
Publisher
Crown
Published
June 29, 1999
Format
Print & ebook
Theme
Marketing strategy · Product failures · Avoiding costly business mistakes
Reading lane
Advertising & Promotion