Hi Phil,

> I recently read a book called Honest
> Business by Michael Phillips and Salli
> Rasberry. I thought the book was very good;
> but I haven't seen many companies that
> follow their advice. I'd be curious as to
> what others who have read the book think of
> it.

I haven't read that book yet but a couple of years ago I read another book by Michael Phillips, "The Seven Laws of Money." I remember I liked it at the time, but I should re-read it since I have learned much more about entrepreneurship since then (through both reading and experience).

From what you say, "Honest Business" sounds like an interesting book.

> Most interesting for me was the chapter on
> "community." These authors make no
> distinction between working in one's
> business and serving a community -- in fact,
> they argue that the purpose of a business is
> to benefit some community of people. They
> present that idea in contrast to many of the
> current ideas of "marketing" --
> that is, as I understood them, they advocate
> that instead of using demographics and
> psychographics to isolate potential targets,
> you find a community of people with a common
> interest, become a participant, and then
> work to make the community itself
> "advertise" for you (via word of
> mouth or whatever).

Sounds like a good approach - thanks for mentioning this! I will find out more about it.

By the way, I noticed on Amazon.com that Michael Phillips and Salli Rasberry also have another book called "Marketing Without Advertising," now in its 3rd edition. (I haven't read it though.)

> I don't know if that would work for every
> business, but I think the word of mouth idea
> is what some business people are trying to
> promote when they use lots of testimonials
> in a sales letter, as an example.

I think testimonials work largely as "social proof" (to use Robert Cialdini's terminology from his book "Influence"). That is, they give the impression that lots of people like the product, and most people feel a natural urge to "follow the crowd."

One interesting book I am reading now is "Marketing Outrageously" by Jon Spoelstra. His approach to get people talking is to do something outrageous.

Spoelsta's specialty is marketing sports teams. One of the incredible ideas he talks about in his book was an idea to get people talking about a sports team by handing out free jock straps to every fan at games (each jock strap with the team's name of course)! Due to some difficulties in getting enough jock straps quickly enough, this particular idea was not implemented.

Spoelstra calls this the "rubber chicken" approach. It is like the AIDA formula - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

Step One is Attention, without that the other steps are useless. Jon Spoelstra just likes to use something outrageous - like a rubber chicken - to get that attention. And yes, he has used a real rubber chicken before. One of his promotions to sell season tickets to fans came in a package connected to a very attention-getting rubber chicken. It seems to work!

Sowpub jock strap anyone? :)

- Dien Rice