Product Description

This commonsense guide lets you develop your brand with the same techniques and technologies as the big players—but without all the cost. You’ll learn to master the same three-step plan the big advertisers use and discover the secret to brand continuity from product to product. This valuable resource will help you connect your products with your customers, no matter how small your brand.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #117566 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From the Inside Flap
Branding is something you probably only think of in terms of household names and huge conglomerates. But branding isn't just for the big boys; smart branding is smart business for almost any company, no matter its size. In Think Two Products Ahead, ad agency insider Ben Mack reveals all the branding secrets the pros keep to themselves so you can put branding to work in your business, large or small.

First, Mack destroys the myth that branding is your logo or your color palette. Then, he demonstrates how great branding works, so you won't waste your money on marketing that gets you nowhere. You'll learn a practical, commonsense approach to marketing that empowers you to develop your own brand with the same techniques and technologies the big players use—but without breaking the bank. In fact, the less you spend on marketing the more important these tools are to your success.

You'll discover tools to give you a competitive advantage as you strengthen the relationship between your customer and your products or services. Every encounter with your customer will deepen this bond, leading to even greater future sales. Great branding isn't just about the product you're selling now, but about maintaining the sales momentum into the product you'll be selling tomorrow. Think Two Products Ahead shows you how to align your business plan with your marketing plan, so you can keep customers indefinitely.

Using real examples from some of the most legendary (or disastrous) branding campaigns in history, Mack gives you an insider's perspective—and inside advice—on which tactics will float your brand and which will sink it. He sorts the bad advice from the good, letting you avoid those missteps that get good companies in bad trouble.

Branding isn't magic. Not since Jay Levinson's original Guerrilla Marketing book has an insider really spilled the beans and taught you how to use the professional grade tools that are so simple they work automatically. Think Two Products Ahead reveals inside secrets that make branding work for marketing budgets of any size—so you can grow your business faster and stronger than you imagined. When it comes to your brand, this insider's guide proves that if you aren't thinking two products ahead, you're hardly thinking at all.

From the Back Cover
"Mack will teach you how to turn every first sale into residual streams of income with products and services that literally compel a second, third, and fourth purchase. If you have a millionaire mind, you've just chosen to buy this book."
—T. Harv Eker, author of the New York Times #1 bestseller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

"Creating loyalty beyond reason and moving from irreplaceable to irresistible is job #1 for all marketers today. Mack's book will help you get there."
—Kevin Roberts, CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide

"I call Mack whenever I have a question about branding and he makes everything clear and even easy and obvious. Think Two Products Ahead is like talking with Mack because every chapter gives you newfound clarity and you see how easy and profitable branding really should be."
—David Doyle, Vice President, Program Development, Discovery Channel's Animal Planet

"For a guy like me who used to absolutely, positively hate branding, this book is a revelation. Finally, a clear-cut confessional from someone who has actually worked in the deep carpets with the guys and guyettes in the designer suits. But Mack generously goes beyond the Wizard of Oz exposé (that takes down the scam Madison Avenue and its provincial cousins have been running on businesses for years) and tells you what's good about branding, and how you can cash in on it for your business. I mean exactly, step by step. If you are in business and you have anything to do with marketing, you need this book."
—David Garfinkel, author of Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich

About the Author
Ben Mack is a sales and marketing expert and an award-winning ad-man who has worked on high-profile campaigns at several prominent agencies, including J. Walter Thompson, BBDO, WestWayne, T.G. Madison, WONGDOODY, and Deutsch. Visit www.ThinkTwoProductsAhead.com for more information.

Customer Reviews

Think Two Products Ahead
Think Two Products Ahead came to me at just the right time, as I was beginning plans on a product launch. Dr. Mack's book not only offered sound knowledge, the exercises I completed while reading the book opened my eyes to opportunities I wouldn't have thought of on my own.

Brand Essence chutzpah from Ben Mack
There are some good things in here. I like Ben Mack's ideas on his Legend Platform, the idea of "Customer as Hero," and his definition of waht he calls "Brand Essence." Those are some good takeaways. Mostly, I salute the author for his chutzpah. This book started as an e-book and has a real renegade, FU feel to it. It's ragged at points, but he fully admits that he's throwing a lot of you know what against the wall.

Think Two Products Ahead: Secrets the Big Advertising Agencies Don't Want You to Know and How to Use Them for Bigger Profits...
With Think Two Products Ahead, Ben Mack offers a professional's point of view for positioning your product or service in the minds and hearts of your consumers.
In the author's words, "Branding is about identifying what is attracting customers to buy your product, your common thread, and weaving this thread into your product and communications as fully and authentically as possible."
By following these bite-sized chapters and choosing to answer the information-gathering questions posed at the end of each, you will be well on your way to garnering your customers' usage of what you have to offer. Mack offers an approach to create loyalty for your current product and even more importantly, ensuring a loyal following "two products ahead."
One of the many concepts he expounds upon is "framing." Framing is about packaging ideas to make them more compelling to your target audience. Consistency in communication with your customer is important also.
The author is generous in citing the men who have influenced and inspired him. Mack is an ad-man with a background working for major advertising agencies in the U.S. and draws upon that experience to support and illustrate his points. He offers many website links throughout the text for more information.
Mack has framed his book for the forward-thinking business person who has a valuable product or service now, and who is also excited about the future of his next venture. Mack successfully presents, explains and delivers a process on which a committed business person can model his own prosperity.

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