Production, Marketing, or Purpose?
One of these six companies spent a fortune telling you it cares about the planet. Its actual decisions say otherwise.
Six companies, six decisions. Judge what is really guiding each one — not from what the company calls itself, but from what it actually does.
Retention Lab
Same budget, same math, opposite right answer — and both scenarios are correct.
Split one fixed budget between winning new customers and keeping the ones you have. Predict the 5-year winner, then watch the churn treadmill play out.
Build the Mix
One card doesn’t belong to any P. Almost everyone puts it somewhere anyway.
Sort marketing decisions onto the four Ps and the target market. Learn why the customer is not a fifth P — and why the right P can still be the wrong choice.
Find the Broken P
Three of these four decisions are right for this customer. The fourth quietly ruins the strategy.
A mix is already built and three Ps fit the target — one does not. Diagnose the broken P and see why it fails the fit test.
Which Type of AI Is This?
Three of these eight are not the type they appear to be.
Eight companies are using AI in their marketing. Sort each one into the five types from Exhibit 3–6 — by the job it does, not the technology inside it.
Strategy Funnel
Choose your target market first. By the time you reach Price, you’ll see what that choice cost you.
Walk the whole planning process — analyze, target, position — and only then build the mix, so the four Ps follow from the choices you made upstream.
Segmenting the Market
There is no correct number of segments. There are definitely wrong ones.
Cluster customers on a grid and judge your segments against the book’s four criteria. Wrestle with “how many segments?” — and see that segmenting is not the same as targeting.
Consumer Funnels
A million people saw the campaign. Four hundred of them bought.
Filters that each look survivable on their own, multiplied together. Predict where a funnel ends up, then find out where an improvement is actually worth spending.
Selling to Organizations
Three buyers. One product. One of them will not take your call, and that is the one you should worry about.
Work three business accounts the way a salesperson would — read how each one buys, then decide how to sell to them. Ends with the three side by side.
The Case of Marigold Garden Center
Uncle Ray knows exactly what is wrong with the family business. He is wrong twice.
You have $10,000, eight weeks, and a family business nobody has ever marketed. Buy the research you think you need — and find out what you can only learn in the right order.
Same Coffee, Different Shopper
Eight people buy the same thing. It is a different kind of product every time.
The product class is a fact about the customer, not the product — and it decides all four Ps at once. Work out which class each shopper is in, and why.
The Case of Northfield Home
Everyone agrees you should fail fast. Then you have to kill something you like.
Eight product ideas, four gates, and a million dollars. Each gate costs more than the last — so the idea you keep alive out of politeness gets expensive.
Follow the Fish
Four activities stand between a boat full of fish and a family's dinner. Who does which?
Forty boats, a wholesaler, a supermarket, and a family that wants dinner. Work out which of the four regrouping activities happens at each stop — and why bulk-breaking happens more than once.
Service Level at Wanderlust Outdoor
Three costs pull in different directions. Only their sum answers the question.
Work out the customer service level that costs the least — then watch a new idea move the answer. Five steps on the chapter's own numbers, and you commit to an answer at every one.
Marketing Strategy Choices: Two Retailers
Two stores make opposite decisions about everything. Both are right.
Two retailers make opposite four-P choices, each right for its own shoppers. Sort the decisions and see why there is no single best mix.
Fix the Leaky Funnel
You found the broken stage, ran a campaign at it, and nothing moved. Here is why.
Find where the purchase funnel is really leaking, then spend one campaign on it. A promotion objective that does not match the stage costs you the whole campaign, and the number at the bottom barely notices.
Replace or Support?
“AI is replacing salespeople.” Put a number on that before you read the eight situations.
Two questions decide whether technology takes a selling job over or only assists it — how standardized the information is, and how much relationship-building the sale needs. Judge eight situations on both, then find out where the AI actually is.
After the Promotion Ends
Every promotion produces a bump. That is why they get approved. Week seven is where the money is won or lost.
Four promotions, four predictions. Sales can fall back below where they started, land exactly where they began, or settle higher — and which one you get is decided before the promotion runs. Two of these four produce the same curve; one is a success and one is an expensive mistake.
Social Media Strategy Selection
Everyone knows which platforms they use. Almost nobody can say which ones a brand should pay someone to run.
Set the target, the objective, two platforms, the content, and the measure — in that order — then find out which of your picks survive the chapter’s three tests: objective, target market, content format. Three scenarios, three different promotion objectives, and the right answer moves every time. Some platforms are arguable either way, and those are the ones worth arguing about.
The Price Cut
Ten percent off sounds like a ten percent problem. It is rarely anywhere close.
Predict what a 10 percent cut does to profit, then drag the price yourself and watch the margin block collapse — or grow. Work out how much extra business the cut would have to bring in to pay for itself, why the same cut is survivable for one company and fatal for another, and what Chapter 17 says to do instead. The three scenarios run at three margins and reach three different answers — work more than one and the comparison is the lesson.
Pricing Workbench
Cover your costs on every unit and you can still lose money on every sale.
Predict a price, then test it three ways — the average-cost trap, break-even, and marginal analysis — with live charts you can drag and explore.
Advertising, Scale, and the Price on the Shelf
Somebody pays for all that advertising. Work out who.
Set a toothbrush maker’s advertising budget off a cost sheet and watch what the volume does to the factory column. Then run the same campaign behind a product people try once and never buy again, and watch the answer move. Five steps, and you commit at every one.