Total Access

Rating:
Summary: Regis McKenna does it again
Review: After the dot-com boom and bust of the 1990s, many people questioned the value of "marketing." In this new book, Regis McKenna indicates, through a wealth of examples and persuasive logic, that marketing goes beyond simple dot-com-style advertising and branding exercises, and emerges from the customer experience of the product or service being sold. Successful marketers, he argues, are found everywhere within the company -- in the research lab, the distribution network, and even the CEOs office, since effective marketing is not a "vertical function," but a process extending across the enterprise.

He examines not only techniques for success, but also the key elements of marketing infrastructure that successful organizations use to gain persistent presence and market dominance. If you're in a position of responsibility within any business, you owe it to yourself and your organization to read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Please Look Elsewhere
Review: Here is a solid example of how brand equity and trust can be eroded. The HBS (Harvard Business School) Press brand, in this case, has forgotten that our time spent as readers is extremely valuable.

Total Access is repetitive and bloated, it meanders endlessly, and it is sprinkled irritatingly with tedious truisms.

The few "gems" in Total Access could have easily been condensed into a solid Harvard Business Review article. As a first step, all the non-value adding self-promotional quotations from the McKenna Group would have had to go.

As a committed learner, I suggest that time would be infinitely better invested in reading or re-reading McKenna's 1991 classic Relationship Marketing. Alternatively, look elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Nice cover poor content
Review: I bought this book as it certainly touches a new subject in business, that of how marketing is changing given rapid technological change. What a dissapointing book! First, there is a lot of repetitive information..."marketing is changing because x,y, and z" is found everywhere. Second, many of the examples are from the author's own experience, his wife's and basically from every member of his family. I wonder how representative they are of the US population? Third, the book doesn't have ANY single graph or chart, so it is plain boring as you can imagine. Being the authour a consultant, I was expecting many cool revealing charts/graphs...and finally, even if you get the bookm, by reading the first and last two chapters, you would save up yourself some great deal time. Hope this is helpful
-AV

Rating:
Summary: Marketing Prescience
Review: Technological change is often manifested in disruptive market shifts and can be characterized by a redefinition of 'playing fields'. From a business and societal perspective, each technology shift brings with it new rules, new business logics, and changing market dynamics. Regis's new book is one that addresses what is unarguably the most fundamental shift of all: "Total Access"

At a big picture level here are three points of view to contextualize the fundamental shift resulting from Total Access:

Firstly, traditionally products and the information/services promoting them followed the same channels. Advertising and the notion of influencing consumers served to separate information into media specific broadcast channels (Radio, TV, etc). Today the disentanglement of information and product channels still exist, however we are experiencing channel convergence and seeing a transformation of new information channels into transaction channels. This creates for the first time "en masse", in any industrialized economy 'a direct dialogue between Producer and Consumer' and the ability to directly action a marketing message 'anytime, anywhere' and with anyone. In Regis McKenna's words, 'New forms of information media enable both Producer and Consumer access, changing the nature of that relationship and also the traditional roles and responsibility of marketing'. The active realtime management of actionable information flows across a myriad of networks and access devices (to increasingly mobile consumers) places new pressures on the discipline of marketing: how to sustain continuous consumer dialogue.

Secondly, in our world of relatively free access to capital competition undoubtedly intensifies, and the quest for constant market differentiation increases - a driver of current day branding practices. The corresponding marketing noise often leads to a desensitization of the consumer to marketing messages and consequently to declining loyalty. And what happens when there is a disembodiment of brand and image from the actual value propositions of the business? In Regis McKenna's words, 'When brand and image are considered independent creations and are only referentially related to the tangible competencies of a business or competitive technology, they lose all meaning and relevance and marketing is often reduced to vapor.'

Finally, If you consider that a key tenet of western civilization, as we know it, is the right to ownership - from which we derived the notion of transferring titles and hence the concept of transaction. And that the foundation of industrialized economies is laid with the pivotal 'Producer Consumer relationship ' - from the study of which the discipline of marketing (a means of promoting, accelerating and optimizing product specific transactions) was born. You'll appreciate why Total Access, which addresses the changes in this relationship, is a must read.

Business today is faced with diminishing returns of its marketing dollars when deployed in the traditional sense and there is an emerging shift that is pushing the functions of marketing into information networks that will invariably be controlled by the CIO. This shift in roles and responsibilities, in itself, is going to cause pains for many businesses and their respective internal constituents.

Whether you are the CEO, CIO, CMO, CTO, business manager, marketing practitioner, technology change agent, or business philosopher, you will be well served reading and understanding the vivid arguments, clearly articulated insights and the transformational consequences Regis McKenna makes in Total Access.

Rating:
Summary: More Regis hype
Review: The most valuable part of this book is in chapter 7 in which he provides the checkpoints for the marketing architecture. McKenna used the first six chapters to create the foundation from which he postulates the need for the marketing architecture -- which is chapter 7.

I bought into his reasons in the first chapter and as a result, I could have, should have gone directly to chapter 7.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: The premise of this book is that the process and function of marketing are changing - in large part due to changes in technology. While it's hard to argue with that basic premise, you're likely to find yourself agreeing with some of the author's opinions about the implications of these changes and disagreeing with others. Whether you agree or disagree with McKenna's predictions for the future, you'll probably find them thought-provoking. The theme I found most compelling was that technology, along with a number of other factors, is likely to bring an end to the era in which branding dominates marketing thought.

Rating:
Summary: More Regis hype
Review: Typical puffed-up, self-promoting. How did this self-described "legend" manage to pull the wool over so many eyes? Remember - this is a PR guy! His advice on anything except self-promotion should be ignored. The book is circuitous and deadly dull.

Rating:
Summary: Perspective Pays
Review: While I'm not one for too many business books, I took the recommendation of a respected friend and read the book.

I wear two hats in a web development and multimedia production company; owner and sales. The content of Total Access satisfied both brains. We provide our clients with communication tools that are focused at internal and external audiences. I found myself head nodding and matching many of our company and client experiences to concepts discussed in the book. The book helped me recognize (and hopefully capitalize on) patterns that we see occurring with our clients.

Regis may not see the future (cause it's already happening), but he may be the first reporting on it. I'd recommend Total Access if you are able to "apply" valuable insight and knowledge to your business life. Stick with Tom Peters if you just like to read.

Rating:
Summary: Has some great new ideas, bad news for traditional marketers
Review: While the book tends to go round and round a bit, its central theme (the evolution of branding to include all channels of access and the need for a new marketing discipline) is very thought provoking.

McKenna argues that many of the functions traditionally performed by marketers under the auspices of "brand" such as customer service, market intelligence, etc. are being performed by IT departments. He warns marketers that their jobs are being absorbed by the CTO and CIO.

His description of a new kind of "Marketing Architecture" is very interesting. The book manages to tie channels of access together with loyalty, brand awareness, globalization, and partnerships. I found that the book required me to wrench my brain to think about marketing and technology from a very different angle.

I suspect marketers will dislike its central premise. Nobody likes to hear that their job is going to be automated by the guys in the IT department!