On Wednesday, I had a book review published in The Wall Street Journal (subscription may be required) on "The Elements of Influence," the first definitive system for out-smarting an opponent, managing a brand, protecting a reputation, and orchestrating word-of-mouth that introduces The Playmaker’s Standard™, a new essential language of 25 irreducible plays, by Alan Kelly, CEO and Founder of The Playmaker’s Standard ™.
Here's the gist:
"Much space in the book is devoted to the Playmaker's Table, a variant of the periodic table that sorts Mr. Kelly's 25 strategic plays into three groups: Assess (plays of the Assess type are "characteristically subtle, typically passive, and are often used to monitor and profile other players and marketplaces"); Condition (these are "moderate, often indirect, and are frequently used to encourage or suppress actions or to influence or reform the sentiments of other players"); and Engage ("active, usually overt strategies whose purposes are to destabilize players and marketplaces")."
In my eyes, maneuvers used by business leaders, advertising executives, public-relations managers, politicians, are a lot more about art than science. In fact, a lot of playmaking, as Mr. Kelly dubs strategy, can be credited to pure luck.
What's your take? Do business leaders and marketers, campaigners and bloggers, political junkies and fans of popular culture need an organized system to help plan every move they make? Do they need a new lexicon to assess both their own and their competitors moves?
Related Stories: | Topics:Management, Marketing, Alan Kelly, The Wall Street Journal, Business, Executive Management |
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Recent Comments | 3 Total
November 4, 2006 at 3:15pm by Roy Young
The research will did at MarketingProfs for our book, Marketing Champions, just published by John Wiley, revealed that marketing is widely midunderstood and undervalued. This is in part due the fact that many marketers employ ad hoc, unsystematic and unrepeatable processes to their work. Without transparent and repeatable approaches, marketing will not receive the respect, stature and power of other business disciplines, like Finance and R&D.
November 5, 2006 at 8:54am by greg
Books like this are nothing more then books for dummies. They help people that are not true artistes or young students ready to take on the teacher. True artistes and scientists don’t stay in the lines. And if they do they end up going in circles
November 6, 2006 at 4:27pm by Patrick McGraw
I have been a marketing consultant for 20+ years and after reading your post, I was reminded of a conference I attended earlier this year. During one of the breaks, I asked the half dozen marketing directors and vice presidents at my table about their current research, competitive intelligence and strategic planning initiatives.
None had any. (We did have a wonderful discussion about colors, fonts and brand.)
The problem isn't with the lack of a process or a lexicon to evaluate moves - it's having too many people with 'marketing' in their job title but without marketing knowledge, training and experience in their work history.
Those trained and experienced in MARKETING (vs. marketing) understand the importance of research, competitive intelligence, and using that information to make decisions that support the vision and strategic plan.
'marketing' people are those that have the title but are only trained and experienced in writing brochures and having them printed at Kinko's. There is no strategic vision, only a tactical approach that's equal to 'would you like fries with that?' because they accept all directions from everyone within the organization as 'how I am a team player'.