Rating: 
Summary: Great and Fun-To-Read Marketing Book
Review:
If you're looking for a great marketing book to kick your promotional ideas into high gear, pick up a copy of "Marketing Outrageously: How to Increase Your Revenue by Staggering Amounts" by sports marketer Jon Spoelstra. (You've got to love a book with a cover picture of a sumo wrestler slam dunking a basketball!)But isn't doing outrageous things dangerous to your corporate or personal image? Spoelstra argues that conservative marketing is far more dangerous for a small company, because you won't build revenue as quickly. The slow growth and incremental improvements many marketers seek isn't adequate. Rather, Spoelstra says you must begin asking yourself the question, "What's it going to take?" Think big. Consider your biggest goals. Then, add the goal to the end of the question: "What's it going to take to __________?" By asking the above question, Spoelstra says you can start to generate ideas and a plan for achieving breakthroughs. Spoelstra asks the reader to write down a question to be asked every day: "What have I done to make money for my company today?" That seems like a good question. Spoelstra tells many stories from sports marketing. For example, when brought in as a marketing consultant to revive the Sacramento Kings' season ticket renewals, which had fallen through the floor, Spoelstra was advised that, even though he wrote a great renewal letter, it wouldn't be read by the fans, who were now throwing away all correspondence from the team. Spoelstra guaranteed the letter would be read. The letter was tied to the leg of a three-foot-long rubber chicken wearing a jersey that said, "Don't fowl out!" The rubber chicken was stuffed into a tubular Fed-Ex container and mailed to fans. As Spoelstra explains, the Fed-Ex box was the headline. The rubber chicken, the subheadline. The only purpose of the headline is to get the prospect to read the subheadline. The purpose of the subheadline was to get the prospect to read the letter. Fans did read the letter attached to the chicken. And, a $12,000 rubber-chicken campaign generated about $2.5 million in extra renewals. While the above is clever marketing, sometimes 'clever' can border upon unethical or misleading. For example, Spoelstra tells about the marketing of the independent film Blair Witch Project. To promote the film, Spoelstra tells us that Artisan Entertainment sent about 100 college students to hand out fliers about three 'missing persons,' and the fliers asked people to visit the Blair web site for more information. The web site gave the impression that the three 'missing persons' were real--not that this was all promotion for a film, which is all it was. Obviously, this marketing worked, because this ultra-low-budget film made for $50,000 went on to gross over $100 million at the box office. And, there have been many, many take-offs on this hide-a-scripted-fictional-film-as-a-true-documentary, even though that's a lie. A film claiming to follow a person on dates, one following a couple of people who start killing people and go on a murder spree, etc., are just a few of the poor follow-up marketing attempts. And, today, some people still think that the witch thing really happened which is sort of frightening. People tend to be more interested in reality than pure fiction, so we've seen a whole host of TV shows which appeal to this by following real people. I guess it was only a matter of time before some producers would realize that they might as well script the darn thing but claim it's true anyway and get the best of both worlds--better action and the mirage of truth. I don't call that 'outrageous.' I call it something else. Do we really want large companies, and, maybe, even, governments adopting such 'outrageous marketing' methods? The book also has a good discussion about AOL's marketing of its online service. Spoelstra, like many good marketers, prefers marketing that is measurable. If you don't really know what the results of a campaign are, how do you know if it worked? AOL was using direct mail, and, surprisingly, Spoelstra says that all those billion (or so it seemed) free AOL disks had a very high return, because many people tried the service and stayed with it. Unlike the competitors who were trying to charge a fee for their software, AOL realized profitability lay in providing the service, not selling the one-time software. So, it gave the connection software away free. That's good marketing--the old get-the-razors-out-there-even-at-a-loss and make up for it with sales of razor blades....
Rating:
Summary: Pushing the Envelop (Idea) Around Your Desk
Review: After you read this book, which I recommend that you do, you will understand the title for this review. I am about to start another business and plan to use many of the ideas in the book. It is a very good, fast read, and worth every minute of your time.
Rating:
Summary: Great book that's fun to read.
Review: Excellent book. It's a different type of marketing book that is a great read to change the pace from other books I've read. Spoelstra's thinking does wonders for companies trying to market with smaller budgets. It's a fast read because it really captivates your imagination and makes you want to learn more.
Rating:
Summary: Ready to be entertained?
Review: Fooled into actually learning something? Inspired? Then pick up Marketing Outrageously now. I had the good fortune of being assigned Jon Spoelstra's Ice to the Eskimos three years ago in college and have been waiting for the following up ever since. As a student being bombarded with assignments, I plowed through Ice in a day, actually disappointed when it ended. Outrageously is even better. The best part of the book is the insider stories. (Elvis, Area 51 and Pat Riley are all subjects.) There is at least one anecdote related to each chapter. Besides being highly entertaining, they are a way to remember an idea Spoelstra is looking to hit home. Spoelstra is not only a marketing genius, but also a wonderful author. He knows his books don't just need to be informational, but engaging as well. Above all, he prompts you to act. If you read this book, you'll laugh, you'll think in a new way and oh yeah, make some extra money for your company along the way.
Rating: 
Summary: This is Basketball?!
Review: I bought it 'cause of the cover. What can I say? I love basketball! Nets are my fave team, but we'll be back! Anyone else hate Shaq and Kobe?! I don't know, I was hurt that, well, I felt used by these teams. Whatever happened to the pure love of the game? Yeah, yeah, I know that doesn't happen anymore, but it should! Tom, my roommate, bragged about this book, Gorilla PR: Wired by this Levene guy. Said this is how the Lakers get their fans online. Man! This is a good book, but it still hurts that it's all about the business now. They'll probably do it to just backyard hoops with your boyz if they can make money on it.
Rating:
Summary: This book will make you money!
Review: I bought the book based on the writer's own recommendation on Amazon. What I expected was some funky ideas about sales strategies, but what I was amazed to find were actual tools, not just concepts, that can be used TODAY to bring in gobs of cash. We have a small company, so we can move quickly, and our first attempt at implementing one of these ideas brought in 7 times the cost of the project within a couple of days! I did find the funky ideas I was looking for, but I was really impressed with the ease of implementation many of them allowed. Not only does it provide a framework for an overall marketing strategy, but it also provides insight into the day to day thinking required to really increase sales. The book has been a great confidence builder during a sour economic period. Our company is getting spanked pretty hard by local layoffs and bankruptcies but after reading this book we still expect to show a significant increase in sales for 2002.
Rating:
Summary: Great for the Maverick
Review: I do not write reviews often but I felt compelled to thank Mr. Spoelstra for this fine piece of work. I believe that this book is especially helpful to small business owners. It is a great read and it has interactive qualities. This is a must keep for my bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I have my own company, that my wife and I just started and in doing so, I purchased this book. Unlike alot of marketing texts that I have read, Mr Spoelstra has a knack for explaining things in a way in which a small business owner thinks. If you are looking for a how to manual, this is not the book for you. Rather, as I read I take what the author has given me and then I apply it to what we need now. The result has been amazing. This book will teach you to completely look outside what you think you are marketing and take you right to the core of it. For me, it changed the way in which I market all of my businesses. Further this book challenges the conventional wisdom of what should work and what does work. Using this book has given me the basis to market in a way, that not only gets noticed, but also puts my company ahead of the competition, in ways they don't yet understand. What I know is this, if you want a book to insprire you and force you to take a hard look at what you are doing, and how you can do it better, this is the one I would reccomend. Prior to this book, I was convinced that if we sold a better product, cheaper, we would succeed. After having read this book, I realize, the product is secondary to the idea. We sell a service, and the product is simply a manifestation of that service. Selling that service or idea, in our case, selling "feeling better" as opposed to "massage" has made a world of difference. I hope you will be as satisfied as I was. I'm waiting with baited breath for more from this author.
Rating:
Summary: Helping you Push the Envelope
Review: I have my own company, that my wife and I just started and in doing so, I purchased this book. Unlike alot of marketing texts that I have read, Mr Spoelstra has a knack for explaining things in a way in which a small business owner thinks. If you are looking for a how to manual, this is not the book for you. Rather, as I read I take what the author has given me and then I apply it to what we need now. The result has been amazing. This book will teach you to completely look outside what you think you are marketing and take you right to the core of it. For me, it changed the way in which I market all of my businesses. Further this book challenges the conventional wisdom of what should work and what does work. Using this book has given me the basis to market in a way, that not only gets noticed, but also puts my company ahead of the competition, in ways they don't yet understand. What I know is this, if you want a book to insprire you and force you to take a hard look at what you are doing, and how you can do it better, this is the one I would reccomend. Prior to this book, I was convinced that if we sold a better product, cheaper, we would succeed. After having read this book, I realize, the product is secondary to the idea. We sell a service, and the product is simply a manifestation of that service. Selling that service or idea, in our case, selling "feeling better" as opposed to "massage" has made a world of difference. I hope you will be as satisfied as I was. I'm waiting with baited breath for more from this author.
Rating:
Summary: Spoelstra is Practical, Entertaining and Vivid
Review: I learned far more than marketing from this differently delightful guide. Spoelstra taught me how to wrangle with non-outrageous (conventional) business managers and win them over. He taught me how to create and measure success in marketing by getting caught up in building massive new revenue. He taught me that if you give your people enough love, encouragement and understanding, they'll make you outrageously successful. But the final lesson is this: unless you spend at least part of your time in the field hustling for new business directly, along with your employees, feeling what they feel in the pit of your trembling stomach, you won't know what you are talking about, they won't respect your judgement, and you'll cut yourself off from the best source of new marketing ideas you're ever going to get.
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