Wednesday 19 May 2010

The Greatest Show on Earth - Evidence for evolution

One of Richard Dawkin's better books that outlines the reasons why he sees evolution powered by natural selection as the only plausible explanation for the wonderful breadth of beauty in the natural world around us.

He gives lucid  arguments against the common creationist explanations though not in such reactionary terms as some of his other works.

I hope it becomes a school textbook - it would inspire a wonder in understanding the natural world.

Monday 17 May 2010

How to sell clever things to big companies

I received a copy of this book when I heard the author Carrie Bedingfield speak at a recent MD2MD seminar OneFishTwoFish (It's only available from her company not on Amazon yet)

It is written in a clear easily digestible style, that would suit many of those that operate on the edges of Marketing, or who need to commission such services.
p33 I particularly liked the section on segmenting your target markets from the perspective of what was important to your customers rather than important to you.
p53 The pyramid to sanity check your website or shop window: What are you really good at, what there is lots of demand for, and what you can do differently from other companies.  The last point being often forgotten as companies rush to say 'we can do that too' when the review their competitors sites.
p61 The ultimate value proposition: 'Our customers save £xxx for every £yyy they spend with us'.
p83 The concept of a nurturing pipeline where you manage the contacts who are not yet customers in a way that encourages them to become ones.
p93 A whole section on websites that gives great clear advice and avoids much of the fluff.
p113 Ten golden rules for newsletters (including not calling them newsletters)

It would have been well worth paying more than the cover price for this book that I would recommend to many managers who need to understand what Marketing does (or more importantly, could do).