The one-sentence summary

Brands are the new traditions, increasingly playing the role that tradition used to play by giving people ideas to live by.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYSNEW MARKETING MANIFESTO

  • There are twelve rules of New Marketing:
  1. Get up close and personal: become intimate rather than public and formal
  2. Tap basic human needs: there are 15 fundamental human drives*
  3. Author innovation: brand identities should be fluid, not fixed
  4. Mythologise the new: don’t just reflect the status quo – create possibilities
  5. Create tangible differences in the experience: sound, smell, touch, taste
  6. Cultivate authenticity: as opposed to false ‘sincerity’ (see Affluenza)
  7. Work through consensus: forget targeting, encircle and involve audiences
  8. Open up to participation: customers should be able to influence the brand
  9. Build communities of interest: don’t classify them, let them belong
  10. Use strategic creativity: look at why? how? where?, not standard media
  11. Stake a claim to fame: do something memorable, you can’t buy fame
  12. Follow a vision and be true to your values: set the goal and pursue it
  • New Marketing is more creative; it treats brands as living ideas that can transform people; it is entrepreneurial, more humanist and less scientific; it favours constant change over conservatism; it is part of a new consumer culture

*They are sex, hunger, physicality, avoiding distress, curiosity, honour, order, vengeance, social contact, family, prestige, power, citizenship, independence, and social acceptance.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

  • It is an easy read, well laid out with hundreds of examples
  • There are lots of case studies if you need markets to compare: IKEA, Tango, Pizza Express, French Connection, British Telecom, Egg and more

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

  • The book was written in 1999 so some of the ideas have moved on somewhat