Marketing Mess to Brand Success: 30 Challenges to Transform Your Organization’s Brand (and Your Own)

Don’t worry about making marketing mistakes —worry about not learning from them, advises Miller (Management Mess to Leadership Success), chief marketing officer at the management services company Franklin Covey, in this energetic guide. In each chapter, Miller introduces a marketing challenge (a “mess”) and provides ways to meet it: in “It’s the Customer, Stupid,” he urges marketers to “take what they do as seriously as if we were trying to win the White House” and monitor how many times the customer is mentioned in meetings. “Install Processes to Harness Creative Minds” suggests highly creative people often feel constricted by processes—and that leaders should discuss that discomfort openly. Each chapter ends with an exercise that directs readers to examine their behavior and efforts. Miller’s advice is not groundbreaking (“hire people smarter than you”), and frequent flights of grandiosity weigh things down (“Shock and awe best describes everything I do”), but the stories of his work at Franklin Covey are personable, and he strikes a fine balance of business wisdom (speak your customer’s language) and concrete pointers (learn to read a P&L). Readers who stay the course will find this an encouraging marketing resource. [em](May) [/em]