Big Brands, Big Trouble

The author of many marketing classics, Trout has advised many top corporations over the years on how to maintain marketing dominance. Using familiar examples like Miller beer, Coke, Xerox, Levi Strauss and Sears, he argues that consumers can't connect to more than one big idea or product category at one time. A company's mental positioning is diluted when they get nervous about competition or market share and spread themselves too thin. At first, this audio tested the listener's wish for a substantial, unifying idea. But into the second half of the program, the pieces somehow pulled together to provide a potent lesson about an interesting and important marketing principle. T.W. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine