Don't expect an excruciating marketing treatise with elaborate case studies and What-If scenarios. Expect instead 22 capsules of business wisdom, or "laws" of common sense marketing with some brilliant examples from the real world to prove them. In this, the book excels and is to date the briefest and best argued work I have come across.
However, given the passion with which some reviewers comment about this book I am inclined to offer a caveat -- please don't base your career around it. Although I love thin, in-your-face books such as this (great reading, great examples to bounce off) they also have a fundamental flaw: the fact that they attempt to shove "laws" on to the ever-morphing scaffold of the business of marketing that does not lend itself easily to codification, much less of an "immutable" nature.
It would be a cinch to come up with examples that go against each law in the book if you really wanted.
For instance,
(1) Law of Leadership (better to be first than to be best) can be argued against with the theory of disruptions and how first-mover advantages do not always materialize. Why is WebCrawler not more popular than Google? Because Google is (way) better.
(2) The Law of Sacrifice (that talks about focus, as do a couple of other similar if not redundant laws, including, well, the Law of Focus) would not hold much fizz in the case of many very successful conglomerates, especially in Asian countries. Imagine a company selling everything from oil to fruit juice to IT services, and still being a top brand in a country. Examples abound in China, Hong Kong, India, Japan.
(3) The Law of the Opposite that advocates the definition of your strategy by considering the leader's (also redundant with the Law of the Ladder, which essentially says the same thing) can be argued by giving umpteen examples of companies that shot from being No.2 to being No.1, some times because No.1 filed for Chapter 11. In such cases, emulating the leader could have in fact been detrimental.
Etc.
Anyway, despite redundancies across the laws, and the possiblity of counter-argument against most of them, this is a ripper of a read for the business intent that it was written for, and 10 years after its publication still as charming as it first was.
Highly recommended reading, but keep your discerning senses about you. Noteworthy: Law of Perception (also Law of the Mind), and Law of the Category.
For thoes who are interested in advertising or are already in the business should really read this book. It is practical advice from experts in the field. I have read other books by both authors and have found very vaulable information in all of them.
I disagree with the negetive previous review. Of course times change and so do values, beliefs, and situations, but the basic advertising, branding ideas stay true. Chrysler would have probably failed if they had not developed brands that created a unique perception in the mind of the consumer. The PT Cruiser, 300M and so on... before all of their cars looked the same...like Chryslers. boring, replications, year after year. That type of line extension would burn a brand out faster than it got started.
The one law which I found most interesting is line extension. I would have given this a 5 star review, however I feel that some brands can line extend without damage to the core brand. However this is very limited and must be delt with caution.
However, you can see the effect of correct line extention today. In the car market Toyota, Nissan, and Honda all wanted to compete in the high priced car market. They would never get in the mind of the consumer with a $40,000 honda. But they would with a new name, new brand image and new advertising strategy....hence, Acura.
Advertising is 90% perception of a brand. Consumers feel what they want to feel, believe what they want to believe, and buy what they think is the better brand. The job of advertising is to change thoes perceptions in the mind of the consumer.
I can go on and on, but it's better if you get the book and read it for yourself. As you can probably tell, I really enjoyed this book.