Selling the Invisible, a Field Guide to Modern Marketing

This is One Minute Manager for the late 1990s. If you enjoy pithy reminders of things you should know about marketing, but sometimes forget to practice, this is the book for you. You are bound to disagree with some of Beckwith’s advice, but you will agree with enough of it to find value in the book. It’s fun to read in small doses, and the format encourages one to open to any page and start reading.

Beckwith’s book consists of 11 fun sections to guide marketers in the service sector, plus a recommended reading list. Each section consists of a series of half‐page to one‐and‐a‐half page “lessons”. Each lesson begins with an example of something a company has done, offers a piece of advice, and then summarizes the advice in a catchy sentence. For example, the first section, “Getting started”, includes 14 vignettes ‐ among them:

The Ad‐Writing Acid Test

A quick but revealing story. Ten years ago. The Pillsbury mansion near the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Chuck Anderson and I are sitting in his second‐floor office admiring the Institute and ignoring Chuck’s office walls. Those walls are covered with our ideas for an ad. After two days, our creative director notices the stench and boldly enters Chuck’s office. Then he mumbles and leaves. The next day he returns. He sees we haven’t progressed. He says something I still remember vividly. “If it’s this hard to write the ad, the product is flawed.” It’s true. If you cannot write a reasonably good ad for your service ‐ an ad that makes an attractive promise to your prospect ‐ your service needs fixing. Write an ad for your service. If after a week your best ad is weak, stop working on the ad and start working on your service” (page 13).

My favorite sections are “The More You Say, the Less People Hear: Positioning and Focus” and “Ugly Cats, Boat Shoes, and Overpriced Jewelry: Pricing”. In the first of these two sections, we are reminded that prospective buyers are ultimately the ones who decide our position in the market ‐ there are many things we can do to try to influence the way they think and feel about our company, but we can not dictate to them, nor can we force them to think a certain way about our company. In the section on pricing he reminds us of often‐forgotten truisms such as that higher prices often connote higher value. However, instead of preachy, pedantic prose, we are treated to a series of fun stories and situations that humorously remind us of key marketing concepts.

Anyone planning to use the advice should read carefully. In the section titled “Monogram Your Shirts, Not Your Company: Naming and Branding”, the sentence at the end of one vignette advises “If you need a name for your service, start with your own” (page 147). Later we are told “Use Federal Express as your standard, and ask: How much does your name communicate, how fast? Are you using color effectively? Is it conveying the same message as your name?” (page 150). These appear to contradict one another, but a more careful reading makes it clear that if you use your own name, you must do more than that ‐ you must create a brand out of it. The 19 vignettes in this section each advise something slightly different, and only after reading the entire section can one decide which pieces of advice are appropriate for a particular business.

“How to Save $500,000: Communicating and Selling” is particularly strong ‐ clearly, this author spent many years in advertising. There is repetition within the section, but only to effectively build his case. He believes that a successful communications strategy must be highly focused, repetitious, honest, and highly visual, and each vignette provides a useful piece of advice to convince the reader that he is correct. There are 43 vignettes in this section, which I thought was overkill, but by the time you finish reading, you will believe his message.

Anyone looking for an easy‐to‐read, light hearted rendition of serious business advice is likely to enjoy this book. I disagreed with his perspective on research, because I have seen the positive outcomes of work that he deems frivolous or irrelevant. Other readers are likely to disagree with other sections. On the whole, though, Selling the Invisible is an easy book to read, with solid business advice for marketing professionals.