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

by John Zagula

Every company needs to figure out the best way to beat the competition. What do you do if the other guy is already dominating the market? Should you challenge them head on or lie low for a while? Should you offer customers high-end features or a low-end price? Or both? During their years at Microsoft, John Zagula and Richard Tong answered such questions so effectively that they helped Microsoft Office and Windows grow from a 10 percent to 90 percent market share. As venture capitalists, Zagula and Tong have continued to test and perfect their system with hundreds of companies of all sizes and at all stages. Now they’re sharing their best ideas and methods in an easy-to-apply book that will be enormously helpful to marketers in every industry and leaders in every size company. The Marketing Playbook explains the five basic strategies for a competitive market—The Drag Race Play, The Best of Both Play, The High-Low Play, The Platform Play, and The Stealth Play. It illustrates how each one works, how to pick the best one for a given situation, and then how to implement it effectively in the real world. Just like a great sports coach with a well-designed playbook, managers who read this book will have the tools, tips, and tricks they need to leapfrog market research, craft a smart strategy, motivate their team, and start scoring major points with customers and against the opposition.

Genres: Business

336 pages, Hardcover

First published October 21, 2004

Reviews

[Grant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad but a lot of repetition in the chapters themselves. Could have used more editing. The "five plays" might be a bit simplistic but they provide some general guidance as to what you're doing in terms of marketing. The concept of gap analysis is one that you can read about in myriad other books; nothing new there. As with doing a SWOT analysis on yourself, and your competition. Perfectly fine ideas, but nothing new. Jon Anderson's prioritization matrix (p.232) with "probability of success" on Y and "scale of earnings impact" on X looks useful and could see myself using this model when approaching the problem of risk vs. return on next project.

Part III is the most useful section, providing some shorthand formulas and structure for approaching marketing tactics. "The Campaign Brief" provides a solid structure for going about doing a campaign brief. "Campaign Deliverables" also useful, providing guidelines on how to do positioning (Yes, but, so..., XYZs, MUST) and makes a distinction between positioning and messaging. Messaging = the stuff you say to the market; positioning = the logic that guides the messages; the overall theme. Interesting idea in the "Rule of Paradox" = offer an oxymoron; unlikely combination of two into one. This often creates a compelling marketing message.

[Rich Tong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, is it OK to review your own book. Probably not. But on the other hand, does it make sense not to have read it. Probably not.

Anyway for posterity, this book is over 15 years old now, but it summarizes some of the lessons on strategy that were originally developed at Microsoft and then refined into a set of overall strategies for winning in a market. Looking back on it, it is just one small piece of the puzzle, but I still use the lessons every day, so maybe it is timeless (at least for me and the 16 people who bought the book :-)

[Denise Brinkmeyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a detailed "how to." It's all about approach, strategy. What I appreciated about the book is the confirmation of what my instinct was telling me. It validated my strategy for our growth and put a label on it. I could now respond to "nay-sayers" telling me that I wasn't following traditional marketing protocols or budgeting.
For that it earns 4 stars from me.

[Maarten Van den Bossche · Rating 3 out of 5]

The authors attempt to explain the field of marketing through a kind of rock-paper-scissors game and some formula’s to succes. While grossly oversimplified it can be a starting point for high-level marketing management, but nothing more than that. Does not go into great depth but fills up with (repeated) examples.

Nice to get or keep an overview but you won’t learn any revolutionary stuff.

[Jeff Jackson]

I had trouble retaining this one. it was a little back and forth. Still discusses some tried and true ways to advance your business

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Normally I'm not a fan of the pithy business book, as most of those business books are little more than useless back-slapping. This one is different, Short, terse, but by no means a back-slapping "Hey! Look at how great we are!" The authors present five different strategies for bringing your product to market. Many a dot-com went down in flames in the 90's for not even gicing much thought to their marketing strategy. Many of those they did still wound up getting crushed. This book will help you put some focus on not just on what you're trying to achieve, but how to get there. Good stuff.

[Lori Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

A should-read book on marketing strategy for the knowledge worker, manager, executive, or entrepreneur.