Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: I picked this book out of a list of books for my sports marketing class. Am I glad I picked this book, it got the highest rating of all of the books read by my classmates. I could not put this book down, it read very fast and was extremely interesting.
Rating:
Summary: If you want to increase your company's sales, read this book
Review: If you read this book, and open your mind to the excellent ideas, and then implement them in your business, your sales will increase. I read the book in one day, and based solely on the excitement of the book and my enthusiasm for the ideas, I implemented several of his ideas. Within a few days, business increased, and for no other reason than following his suggestions.And as important, it is a tremendously "fun" read....Jon's style is easy, his analysis terrific.
Rating: 
Summary: From The Trenches...
Review: If you're any kind of a marketing geek, this is a book you have to read. Spoelstra's stories from the trenches are great fun. His success stories also make great models to work by. Granted, as one reviewer put it, these examples are fine if you have deep pockets. But don't discount them as only for big-bucks companies. A creative thinker will frequently find a way to scale down the model to fit his own paradigm. Nobody's as pragamatic as I am when it comes to marketing that makes sense for small companies. Those companies are my bread and butter. And while you might not be trying to sell Portland Trailblazers tickets to an apathetic market, there is something to be learned from their basketball-playing sumo wrestlers. (Or maybe I'm just a sucker for a fat Asian guy in a diaper.)
Rating:
Summary: When You Need to Raise Your Impact Quotient...
Review: In this era when too much has been written about micro-techniques, mathematics, glamour words and other tedious trivialities, Jon Spoelstra drops back to give us a clear look at the long view, then kicks the double-pointed marketing football squarely between the uprights from 60 yards away. WE WIN! HOO-RAY! Jon's formidable reputation was made rescuing companies from the brink of bankruptcy. That he has repeatedly done this when he as been given very little money to work with (and even less time,) is, to me, simply astounding. You want the really good news? Jon gives you all the details of every situation. Nothing glossed over. Fourth down, 2 seconds left in the game, 75 yards to go. Jon Spoelstra shows you how to throw a marketing Hail Mary to win the game. Lots of sports examples. Testosterone runs like water. More than once I laughed out loud. You will, too. Bottom line - In "Marketing Outrageously," Jon clearly shows us how the MESSAGE can make all the difference between bold, barking big-dog success and whimpering, whining, flaccid failure. I bought copies for all my staff and all my clients. You should, too.
Rating:
Summary: Did he "write" this?
Review: It's hard to believe anyone wrote this book, Marketing Outrageously. To me, it felt as if me and Jon Spoelstra sat in a room and talked about crazy ideas. Jon tells you to take a quiz at the end of EVERY chapter. He even tells you to write notes to yourself and carry them around with you. This book is more interactive than the Internet. But don't take it from me, read the book. And read it twice. Four days after I received it, I finished it. You won't want to put this book down. Too bad Amazon's rating system doesn't go beyond 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for anybody interested in marketing and/or sports
Review: Loved reading MARKETING OUTRAGEOUSLY by Joe Spoelstra, one of America's top sports marketers . . . he uses many real--and often funny--examples to show how it is possible to get a company known without going into bankruptcy. Even if you're not a sports fan, there is much here that
can be applied to almost any marketing situation. What I so much liked about this book is that Spoelstra
has been involved in what he writes about . . . he has
consulted with major sports organizations including baseball,
hockey, soccer, and basketball in the United States, Spain
and Japan. Also, he was general manager of the Portland Trail Blazers for
11 years, during which time he was the focus of what was perhaps the strangest trade in sports history. Portland was in need of a guard to fill a hole created by injury. The guard the Blazers wanted was the starting point guard for Indiana Pacers. A deal was struck; the compensation to the Pacers wasn't a player, but one week of Spoelstra's time. He then played a key role in the restructuring of the Pacers' front office. Later, as president of the New Jersey Nets for three years, he
increased that team's revenue by almost 500 percent. There were several memorable passages; among them:
* Learn to ask this question: "What's it going to take?" Most business people are thinking, "How can we
make our budget numbers?" or "How can we
improve our profit over last year?" They are
asking the wrong question. What if you asked the following question at
your company: "What's it going to take to be
the best company in our industry this year?" You don't have to be CEO or a business
owner to ask this kind of question. You could
ask, "What's it going to take to become
the best marketing department in the industry
this year?" or "What's it going to take to be
the best department in our company this year?" I know how difficult it is to answer that question.
I've asked it many times. Sometimes I've just
asked myself, because it can seem too outrageous
to ask anyone else. Sometimes I've asked others,
even though if they'd been carrying guns I'd
probably to dead. But you have to ask it, because
that's the only way to come up with truly outrageous
marketing ideas. * I've got a warped perspective on advertising: I think
advertising should get results you can feel. Don't
hive me any of that image or identity stuff; I want
revenue that I can track to the ad. Anything less is,
to me, like throwing my money into a tornado and
hoping for the best. You might ask me: "How much revenue would
make you happy?" Well, I've got a simple little
formula for that: $4-to-$1. I call it The Ratio.
For every dollar I spend on an ad, I want to see
four dollars in revenue as a direct result. * At the beginning of this chapter, I asked you to
take out of your pocket the piece of paper on which
you had written, "What's it gonna take . . .?" because
I was going to ask you to write something on the
back of it. Here's what I want you to write. It's another
question: What did I do today to make money for my company? Go ahead, write that down on the other side of the paper.
I'll wait. That piece of paper is going to become an important
tool for you. Just two simple questions. They could
have a lot of different answers. But to really get into
Marketing Outrageously, you've got to ask yourself
those two questions--every day.
Rating:
Summary: Marketing Outrageously - Help or Hype?
Review: Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Jon Spoelstra gives several success stories from his years in sports marketing. His ideas aren't overly complicated but rather seem to be based on common sense. As a marketing professor who teaches courses in promotion, I found myself cringing occasionally as I read how marketers should focus on sales-driven/response-driven promotions and spend less on building awareness or image. While I believe the book would be helpful to practitioners, I believe there is a certain amount of hype with the "marketing outrageously" theme. Some of Spoelstra's examples aren't as much outrageous as they are simply defiance of conventional wisdom. However, he effectively uses the "outrageous" label to position the book. And, the cover is a great for grabbing attention- my 6 year old son looks for the book every time we're in a bookstore!
Rating:
Summary: Dead-on advice from someone who's been there and done it!
Review: Personally, I'm sick to death of reading sales and marketing advice from authors whose only experience in actually getting customers to buy things is in their imagination. This book is crammed full of real world advice from someone whose experience in the real world is obvious on every page. If you're looking for something that's trendy and slickly written, you should look elsewhere. (Actually, this book would have benefited from just a bit of judicious editing.) But, let's face it: Slickly written is not why you ought to buy a book about marketing. The standard for a great marketing book is simply this: Is it going to help you drive sales and make money. By that standard, this book is an absolute winner. I cannot recommend it highly enough, particularly if you've already tried the trendy stuff and it hasn't worked.
Rating:
Summary: Great update to his previous book
Review: The author, Jon Spoelstra, is a hired gun marketing consultant who goes in and turns around companies with severe lack of revenues. Most of them are sports teams. So, we could think of him as a serial-turnaround artist. For this reason, you should read the book to see his techniques in action. This is his second book. The other is "Ice To The Eskimos". This book is very similar to the first book. I consider this second book an update to the previous one. Both are highly recommended. In some ways I thought the first book had more meat. This second book is easier to read. The author has about 20 major points that he makes in both books. One such point is to think outrageously when working on your marketing ideas and programs. He gives lots of stories and anecdotes to help you in this regard. Another point by the author is the use of direct marketing over indirect marketing. He recommends that you let the customer tell you when to stop running the ad based on the returns that it generates. He gives lots of examples. His recommendations regarding TV ads follows the recommendations of Roy Williams, who wrote "Wizard of Ads" by the same publisher. In TV he recommends that you dominate a niche, or segment. On one hand he believes in accepting the product as a given. Many sales and marketing people blame poor sales results on the product, just as a failed warrior is quick to blame his weapons. He believes most of the problems are caused by lack of creativity and action. But on the other hand, the author guides you on how to change your product offering. One technique is to understand what business you are really in. He gives you some checklists and examples on how to do this. The author is totally revenue focused. He foresakes short term profitability to build revenues so he can pick up profitablity on subsequent purchases. The hallmark of this second book is a call to action to write two important questions on a 3x5 card... and carry it around with you. To find out those questions you'll need to buy and read the book. After reading this book you should have several important things to change for your business. So it is highly recommended. I would have given this book a "4" but because he made the case so convincingly that the CEO and chief marketing guy should make frequent sales calls... that I had to bump the score up to a "5". Read the book to find out why. I think there are better 5's out there, but this one will pay you dividends if you apply some of his recommendations. He is a player with real experience. John Dunbar
Rating: 
Summary: Major Disappointment
Review: The book is fun to read. No question. The stories are great, especially if you like basketball and sports. Jon Spoelstra certainly came up with some outrageous ideas, and my oh my, didn't they all work great! Isn't he a genius? This book certainly made me think that Jon Spoelstra thinks a lot of himself. Unless you're running a sports franchise, I'm not sure there's actually much useful information to glean from the book, and that's the reason you buy business books, isn't it. For all it's quizzes, which are really "precious" (in the worst sense of the word), the only real idea from the book is "go crazy...risk something." That's great if you've got deep pockets. People will do a lot of crazy things to link themselves with major sporting teams (sponsorships, wacky promotions, giveaways, etc.). But what if you own a plumbing supply store? A shoe repair store? A used CD shop? Yes, you too can do crazy, wacky things, but if you do the wrong crazy thing, just because Spoelstra thinks you should, will you have the cash flow left to try another one? Unless you've got a big organization and deep pockets (or access to deep financing) his urging to be outrageous seems a bit pat and obvious. Yes, be outrageous, sure. But how do you temper it? How do you give yourself an "escape route" if things go wrong? How do you pay for it? So, I finished the book very entertained by the anecdotes, and impressed at the contributions the author has made to the ways in which we all enjoy professional sports events and team. But I had not one truly practical, useful, actionable idea to put to work.
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