Marketing: A Love Story: How to Matter to Your Customers

Libro corto y directo. Con buenos mensajes sobre hacer del marketing, no solo una forma para vender, si no una herramienta para que nuestra marca sea amada.

Jiwa’s novel outlines three main categories or arguments: strategy, context, and story. She explains the overall purpose of the book by writing, “We had systems and processes, we provided coupons and discounts, and yet we lost sight of what could have made us really matter to those customers” (p.2). I found this book engaging, and agreed with each of the author’s claims. Jiwa’s main goal is to explain the importance of centering marketing tactics on customers. The author’s biggest strength is that each of her three specific arguments credibly attests to her overall objective. In her first main argument regarding strategy, Jiwa explains the idea of a mission statement in that it “doesn’t need to be long and complex” but rather “a promise, a statement of intention” (p. 12). She supports this argument by providing credible, modern examples like Instagram, to capture and share moments, or Twitter, to instantly connect people with what’s most important to them. Jiwa goes back to supporting her overall purpose of customer focus by writing “If you’re ever in doubt about how to create value, simply work out how to make your customers feel good. Then do that” (p. 15). The author supplies her readers with real life examples of successful companies, like LEGO, that “begin with the people who will use it” (p. 16). I agree with Jiwa’s objectives regarding strategy. She promotes the idea of thinking about marketing as a strategy for growth, not just sales. This makes sense with the future of technology and social media. I like how the author provides a real life example of customer retention. Specifically, she tells a story of a time when a new café opened in her neighborhood, and it lacked something that made customers want to continuously go back. In Jiwa’s second main argument, she discusses the importance of context. The author supports her claims by supplying the reader with an example of Apple. She writes, “While most retailers were showing people what they had in stock, Apple was showing people what their products could help them become” (p. 44). While tackling each individual argument, Jiwa makes a point to remain on task with her overall theme, customers. She explains, “It’s not possible to create products, services or innovations that fly without understanding people first” (p. 52). In accordance with context as one of Jiwa’s arguments, she underlines the importance of empathy. Specifically, she supports her argument by providing a real life example of Dr. Dre’s headphones. She explains, “They make great headphones because they understand how music should sound, and more importantly, they know that people want to feel, not just hear, when they listen to it” (p. 56). By empathetically relating to your customers, marketing becomes as simple as understanding what makes people tick and why. Bernadette Jiwa’s last main argument discusses the theme of a story, and the purpose of brand-story telling. The author touches on the topic of competition, a serious issue when it comes to marketing. She relates this issue back to her main argument by writing, “If you’ve created a brand story worth sharing, why worry about the competition?” (p. 62). When examining the topic of pricing, Jiwa again supports her argument by providing a real-life, modern example. She uses Uber, the app that allows you to connect with a driver instantly through your smartphone. Price is a story we tell ourselves, because the real value of Uber, despite the fact that you don’t need cash or a physical credit card to pay, has to do with the technological advances. Uber portrays a story of knowing exactly where your driver is, and the perception of time being saved. As Jiwa goes on to make her point about stories, she again relates back to her main purpose of her book by highlighting the importance of making yourself part of the story when marketing to customers. Conclusively, the author evidently supported her arguments by providing real-life and modern examples. She clearly outlined her main goal (customer importance), through her three main arguments (strategy, context, and story). One of the most important things I got from reading this book was a quote that essentially sums up the novel. Jiwa writes, “Success is not just a data point that you hit on the sales chart, or a dollar figure that makes your accountant happy. Success is how your customers feel. How are you measuring that?” (p. 73).

Marketing: A Love Story: How to Matter to Your Customers, written by Bernadette Jiwa is the perfect book for all businesses, primarily Entrepreneurs looking for strategies to reach their customers. The book’s main question and argument discusses ways in which businesses can make ideas reach people and relate to people rather than have countless ideas that but without purpose. She discusses how people, marketers in particular, never run out of ideas but the major issue is how to make these ideas stick with people and truly make them matter in people’s lives.The book is a quick and easy read at a little over 100 pages; however Bernadette Jiwa gets her point across and leaves readers thinking about what they have just read immediately and also long after they finish reading. Bernadette Jiwa argues that businesses and retailers are very focused on getting customers into a store and out of the store however they do not truly care about why the people are there. For businesses, it ultimately just comes down to selling products and getting more customers in and out of the store and making money, which she argues should not be the case. Another interesting point Bernadette Jiwa makes is that people trust brands because they convey a level of reliability. When people give brands this trust they deserve it in return. The opening of this book captivated me and kept me thinking throughout the novel about various companies and whether or not they fulfil what Bernadette Jiwa discusses in Marketing: A Love Story: How to Matter to Your Customers. It was interesting when thinking about the successful companies in the world and how they truly actually do fulfill everything that Jiwa discusses in this book.Throughout the book Bernadette Jiwa provides great examples from the real world for business and entrepreneurs to succeed. She begins with discussing Mission Statements which truly is the beginning for most companies trying to make a living in the world. She then goes into what makes a successful product or company and gives great advice and again supplies real world examples to the readers in order to get them thinking. She uses companies that are the best in their industry such as LEGO. Bernadette Jiwa discusses how companies try to copy the successful companies but ultimately fail and why they fail. The entire book is extremely thought provoking and filled with useful tips for everyone looking to run a successful business. She ends the book answering the question she set out to answer in the beginning which is how to continuing coming up with ideas that matter.In Marketing: A Love Story: How to Matter to Your Customers, Bernadette Jiwa provides a comprehensive description of how to be successful as a business. The primary audience is smaller businesses and entrepreneurs, however the book has truth for every company no matter how large or how small. Bernadette Jiwa does a great job in using real businesses as examples for her various points. This is what makes the book so thought provoking. While reading this book I couldn’t help but think about the companies in the world that are successful and applying the techniques and tips that Bernadette Jiwa discusses to these companies and realizing that most of the great companies do use these techniques. This analysis shows that this book has a great deal of truth in it and shows how well written the book is. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in any aspect of business and would highly recommend that anyone who is interested in marketing read this book as it provides a great strategy to both successful marketing and successful business. Bernadette Jiwa is extremely successful in providing insight to readers about how to create and sustain a good business and transform the business from good to great.

It’s an easy to read book, with some fun examples, easy to understand and apply to my business. I've been doing business online for about 2 decades and I’m a branding expert, so it wasn’t filled of huge discoveries for me. Nonetheless, was a great refresher, in a simplified way I can appreciate.

I chose the Kindle edition so I can refer to it no matter where I am. Bernadette has distilled her years of study into this great pithy book. Having been in business for 40 years I have seen and read many business books. But Bernadette has created what could be called the "Fundamentals of Doing Business" for any business. All of the technical business disciplines are just stand-alone towers without the integration into the work: "what if we thought about the work as marketing , and marketing as the work— as part of a symbiotic relationship where neither could be separated from the other? What if marketing was intrinsic - not something to hand off, but something to bake in".Ya think? Customers = people, or to be more precise, a person. Why what we are doing will "matter to people, to a person". If everyone in our business can understand that whatever they are doing matters in relationship to a person, the customer, their work will have meaning. Imagine that.Thank you Bernadette - I'm sending your book to my network and promoting it online.Great work!Jiwa, Bernadette (2014-09-30). Marketing: A Love Story: How to Matter to Your Customers (Kindle Locations 115-117). The Story of Telling Press. Kindle Edition.

It must be said that I am a bit of a Bernadette fan. Her book The Fortune Cookie Principle formed the skeleton of my business’s marketing strategy. I went through every question at the end of the chapters and religiously wrote my answers. It was quite possibly the most important exercise I have done for my business. Uncluttering the ideas, vision and ‘how to’ onto paper was powerful and dramatically reshaped the value proposition of my startup.Ever since then I have soaked up her insights on brand storytelling and embedded marketing strategies through her blog at www.thestoryoftelling.com (if you don’t already read it then I encourage you to do so).With Marketing – A Love Story: How to Matter to your Customers, I read it in one go, quickly flipping the pages (she’ll have that effect on you when you read it too). I found it hard not to highlight take-aways in every other paragraph for fear I’d have half a book to remember. As I read Bernadette’s blog posts, some material was familiar but I realized certain points needed hammering home again. As I read, I scribbled notes and ideas down that suddenly pinged up as I went through the 30 Questions every Entrepreneur should Ask section. In fact, I’d say the book is worth buying for that part alone: it is a vital business map and whoops a business plan or model generator hands down.This is a book for people who want to embed care into the core of their business. It doesn’t teach you how to sell, it teaches you how to tell stories that build customer loyalty and long lasting quality into your service or product. Yet as you read it, you see how much that approach wins over hearts that brings customers in willingly.It examines every element of marketing for those in the earliest stages of business to those who are established and need to redress the way they connect with customers.If, as Bernadette says, “intention is everything” and “people can sense yours; they know you’re in for the right reasons”, you’ll come away feeling that she’s someone whose intention is simply to help you build a happy and successful organization.Buy this book now. It’s a gift.

Its... excellent. Its a thin book, but honestly every page has some nugget in there about modern marketing. Often the content feels like its being regurgitated a little, but when you REALLY study whats being said its another facet around the central theme topic. Every page has some truth or logic to it that seems so simple once read, but is obviously rarely understood in todays world, and is rarely ever executed - if you own a business or are in marketing this is a MUST READ.Bernadette seems to be akin to a marketing muse of some sort. This book is actually an aggregation of lots of her blog posts, but its still worthwhile to buy. I will read and reread this book several times.Ive bought the rest of Bernadettes books because of how much this one pucnhes above its weight and will shortly buy her newest book "hunch".

Love, love, love.This book is helping me with my job, and is such a good read.

Brilliant from Bernadette Jiwa. She has a really unique and inspiring view on business. A great read.

What a gem. Complements other books on my shelves, from the likes of Seth Godin, Hugh Macleod, Dan Blank and Nilofer Merchant. Off to read Fortune Cookie right now....