Marketing, Branding and Sales

Three decisions carry most of the weight here: which customers to serve, what claim to own in their minds, and how that claim reaches them and converts. Ries and Trout argue for defining yourself against an existing competitor rather than describing your own features, and for narrowing the claim until it fits in one word. Cialdini catalogues the six mechanisms that make people say yes, Heath and Berger explain why some messages get repeated and most do not, and Moore describes the gap where technology products stall between enthusiasts and the mainstream market. Ogilvy supplies the copywriting craft and the discipline of measuring response, Ross and Tyler turn the sales side into a repeatable process with specialised roles, and Packard's older polemic is where the argument about manipulating consumers started.