Product Description

With the continued fragmentation of the media and proliferation of media options, the balance of power has shifted from the marketer to the individual. In Join the Conversation, Jaffe discusses the changing role of the consumer and how marketers must adapt by joining the rich, deep and meaningful conversation already in progress. This book reveals what marketers must do to become a welcome and invited part of the dialogue, and how to leverage and integrate the resulting partnership in ways that provide win–win situations for businesses, brands and lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #463053 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Review
“The long and short of it is that the book is excellent…Jaffe deserves a place in Marketing history for this.” (SlightlyRoughAroundtheEdges.Wordpress.com, Tuesday 25th February 2008)

“In a series of case studies, Jaffe shows you how to bring your brand up to speed.” (Fin Week, Thursday 3rd April 2008)

Review
“long and short of it is that the book is excellent…Jaffe deserves a place in Marketing history for this.” (SlightlyRoughAroundtheEdges.Wordpress.com, Tuesday 25th February 2008)

“In a series of case studies, Jaffe shows you how to bring your brand up to speed.” (Fin Week, Thursday 3rd April 2008)

From the Inside Flap

Throughout the history of advertising and marketing, communicating with consumers has been a one–way street. Marketers produced and disseminated messages and customers consumed them whether they liked them or not. Today, every person sees thousands of advertisements a day—and totally ignores the vast majority of them. Yet, companies still spend billions of dollars each year yelling at customers who don′t want to hear it.

In this follow–up to his bestselling book, Life After the 30–Second Spot, author Joseph Jaffe explains how marketers must adapt to the brave new world of the Internet, social media and networking, consumer–generated content, blogs, and podcasts by joining the rich, deep, and meaningful customer conversations already in progress.

Consumers today are active participants in the advertising process, not silent targets and sitting ducks for one–way communication. Forget about the medium being the message; today, consumers are both the medium and the message. The future is bright for organizations that can join the ongoing dialog and leverage their customer relationships to build win–win situations for businesses, brands, and individuals. Through the power of community, dialog, and partnership, marketers finally have the power to talk with consumers rather than at them.

Traditional marketing is a red flag smart consumers can see from a mile away; an outdated idea lurching toward them with the same predictable exhortations and tired come–ons. They′ve had enough, and it′s time to change the dynamic. When marketing is a conversation, marketers can get to know their consumers as individuals, not as silent members of a faceless demographic subsection. Join the Conversation uses real–world brands and companies, real case studies, and real conversations to reveal how to talk to customers—and how to get them talking about you.

It′s time for marketing and marketers to become more meaningful and authentic, or they will both become obsolete. Totally practical and brilliantly revolutionary, Join the Conversation reveals the future of marketing and how you and your company can march boldly into it.

Join the conversation today at www.jointheconversation.us or through Jaffe′s daily blog and podcast, Jaffe Juice (www.jaffejuice.com).

Customer Reviews

Powerful set of ideas to work towards
The long and short of it is that the book is excellent and I'm not going to write a 1000+ words on it as i don't want to spoil it for you so here are a few observations.

1. General Feeling:
If you have ever read Jaffe's brilliant blog then you will know how how enthusiastic he is about this type of stuff and the book is no different. What I like about this book is that it doesn't need to be read cover to cover (although that's what i did). It is written in a way that you can dip into chapters that interest you, like a website or a blog, not sure this is intentional? If it is great - `Marketeers don't have time to read' ahem... I read that somewhere????

The book is basically a set of ideas on what is possible for marketeers today and tomorrow and as such not a `how to do social media for dummies in three simple steps' type of thing. If you are expecting that then you will probably gonna be disapointed. You need to do a bit of work decoding the principles behind his thinking. But, i guess that's exactly what he wants you to do though - pick up these ideas, get excited, run with them and mutate them to work for your organizations comms problems.

2. Personal Gratification:
That I was right. Anyone who knows me will have heard me speak many times of:

1. The internet is the centre of your universe and Google is grand central station
2. It's the quality of content that matters not the (graphic) design
3. Your database is your best marketplace (quality vs quantity)
4. User Experience is where you make the biggest difference (service)
5. Technology is the catalyst

Thanks Mr Rapp.

3. Jaffe's Six C's:
Is not that new to me but he is the one that has put it down first (i think?) so kudos to him for this:

1. Content
2. Commerce
3. Community
4. Context
5. Customization
6. Conversation

In the very near future these will be taught in schools across the globe just like the 4/5P's. Jaffe deserves a place in Marketing history for this.

4. Communication -> F2F Conversation = Better Connections and more sales:
This is best illustrated with the Dell case study and worth the price of the book alone.

5. Manifesto for Experimentation:
Chief Conversation Officer, Return on Experimentation (ROE) both brilliant bits of thinking.

6. Final Though:
This has to be the most exciting time to be involved in marcoms since i guess since the late 60's when TV blew up and Jaffe is the prophet showing you the way. Embrace it -- change happens all the time and you cannot stop it. So if you feel like: `Your fingertips are holding onto the cracks in your organisation'* but are unsure why you are in that position then you need to a. read more and b. start by reading this... so what are you waiting for?

Great content, dismal form
The contents of this book are excellent, as has been proved very clearly by developments since the book was first published.
But the form is atrocious! I couldn't believe such poor spelling and grammar had actually been printed on paper (in a hardback no less!). The same writing style is occasionally found on twitter, blogs and social networks, where spelling is less of an issue (to me anyway). Examples: "number of views bare little relation to...", different spellings of the same company name, noun-verb agreement, punctuation, etc.
The structure of the text is chaotic and seems to have missed final editing, with paragraphs apparently unrelated to the one before and after. It cost an increasing effort to follow the author's train of thought.
I had to give up around page 50; what a waste of money! For the money I paid for a hardback book, I had expected the text to have been edited.

A Quick Glance Brings Rewards
Even viewing the pages of this book that Jaffe has allowed us to see has brought its own rewards.

His thoughts on word of mouth are careful and true. I've always felt that WOM was a little er overemphasised and that it can be abused by marketeers has been understated.

I wish more publishers would give us a good selection of pages before we buy. It there weren't viewable pages for this book chances are that I wouldn't decide to buy. After all when you go to a bricks and mortar book shop you can flick through the book at leisure.

So this looks like an excellent book. I'll give a further review when I've read it.