The Marketing Playbook: Five Battle-Tested Plays for Capturing and Keeping the Lead in Any Market

Rating:
Summary: 5 Reasons to read this book.
Review: 1. It is better than other marketing books because it is simpler and fun to read.
2. It gives you a great platform to evaluate your own approach.
3. Read it yourself, I can't tell you everything.
4. I can pick and choose chapters or plays to accomplish my goals.
5. The Marketing playbook appeals to an entrepreneur as well as the sophisticated venture capitalist.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best marketing books in the last ten years!
Review: A lot of books on marketing strategy are either written by or for consultants - sometimes interesting and insightful, but terribly academic and impractical -- or very practical, but frankly dumbed-down and of little enduring value to real industry practitioners. The Marketing Playbook let's you avoid this Hobson's choice - and you'd better buy a copy before your competition does! This is marketing, not as fodder for consultants, but as fuel for sales.

High tech marketing - hell, any marketing - frequently hovers in the clouds, about 40,000 ft. above real customers. At best, it's a costly effort, run by pretty smart people, whose effectiveness is difficult to gauge. In The Marketing Playbook, Zegula and Tong have build a solid staircase between marketing strategy and real customer-driven results: Strategy that is tangible, actionable, and measurable. Should produce real results, for a change.

Rating:
Summary: No shame for these guys!!!!!
Review: Amazing that when REAL reviews are written, Zag & Tong resort to using cronies to counter the latest and most honest reviews (for example, Malloy & Goldberg work for the same company as them -- Ignition Partners). Is this the same level of shamelessness these two used to "market" the Microsoft monopoly?

Obviously, the two of you are concerned that the book does not stand on its own merits.

Rating:
Summary: "Nothing But Net"
Review: Full disclosure here, I've worked with Zagula and Tong and have seen the 5 plays in action. I've witnessed the winning ways. This book is a kick to read, truly it's the next best thing to having these two very smart guys, John and Rich, consulting with you one on one. But hey, I'm a bit biased. So, I put The Marketing Playbook to a real test. I handed it to my son who recently graduated from college and has a solid idea for a new business. He read it while working on his business plan. His take: Fun to read. Thought provoking. Real plays he can use. Should be made required reading for anyone starting a business.


Rating:
Summary: This is a Category Management book and not a Marketing book
Review: Hmm ... looks like Zagula & Tong tapped into their rolodex to have friends, family, and colleagues sing their praises with these over-the-top glowingly fluffy reviews. I liked the book, just not to the extent these other reviewers supposedly did.

(Seriously, what is up with all these over-the-top and overly gracious reviews?)

This book should not be titled, "The Marketing Playbook." Instead, a better title would be, "The Category Management Playbook" as Zagula & Tong offer great strategic advice on how to dominate a product category.

Their five plays (drag race, platform, stealth, best-of-both, and high-low) to market leadership are easy-to-understand and applicable to any market situation. Plus, their ABC Gap Analysis is a more simplistic way to engage in backcasting strategic planning.

As a marketer, I learned very little from this book and found the heavy reliance on high-tech/computer-related analogies obtuse. But as a 'category manager,' I learned some useful ways to bring products to market.

Rating:
Summary: Marketing made executable
Review: I really enjoyed Zagula and Tong's book, The Marketing Playbook. I felt it untangled many of the concepts that I have been working with for the last 20 years and laid them out in a no nonsense, easy to understand, and most of all easy to implement format. As a long time marketer of specialty consumer products, I have always gotten inspiration and an energy boost out of Reis and Trout books. I felt the same way after reading this one. Zagula and Tong are onto something, and I am going to dedicate my up and coming marketing plan to making it work for me.

Thanks guys.



Rating:
Summary: I hate these fake reviews
Review: I'm giving it one star to balance all the friends and family giving it five stars (I love all these brown-nosers putting their names on their over-the-top reviews). The book is not so bad actually. Certainy it deserves at least three stars because it is well written and it gives you interesting historical insight. As a historial insight book, a what happened book, I'd give it five stars even. But the five plays idea was invented for the book, hardly the guiding model that made them and Microsoft successful and that now will be useful for everybody. Most annoying, the idea that Microsoft could teach anybody about marketing is ridiculous. They don't even have customer service. You can not call them when their products don't work. They are a monopoly like the IRS (come to think of it, their un-understandable manuals have close resemblance too).

Rating:
Summary: Don't go to market without this book!
Review: This book exposes marketing for what it is- strategy integral to the success of any company. The authors have real world marketing experience and keen insight into many historic battles that have played out in boardrooms as well as the consumer's pocketbooks.

Besides being an interesting business read, this book provides actionable information on how to evaluate your customers, market and competition to create a winning play that your entire company can understand and implement. A must read!

Rating:
Summary: Weak
Review: this book gives a lot of theoretical overview-type knowlege that is pretty useless if you want to go out and promote a product or service. it seems like the authors spent more time trying to promote their cute analogy about marketing being like sports than actually giving some information that you could take back to your company and turn into sales.

Rating:
Summary: Consider the source
Review: When you consider the source: two of the hottest young rainmakers from THE most successful company on the planet, you'll understand why The Marketing Playbook HAS to become the Rosetta Stone for anyone trying to win in business. Zagula and Tong bring forward their white hot experiences from their days at Microsoft and capture them in a vivid, easy-to-follow narrative. This book contains the plays for anyone aspiring to championship marketing.