false 1746 0 0 New York Magazine. He has also been the art critic for The New Republic and Newsweek and has written for such publications as Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and The New Yorker. He lives in New York City.]]> 2557 0375711163 9780375711169 51 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1161088021m/2557.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1161088021s/2557.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2557.de_Kooning_An_American_Master 4.25 225 Amazon.com reviewing--a masterpiece that explains how the Dutchman de Kooning became the master painter of the American century. It's a page-turning tale: raised by a mom who beat him with wooden shoes, de Kooning escaped Rotterdam as a stowaway on a freighter and found a second family in New York's rampageous art bohemia. He subsisted on ketchup and booze, and broke through around 1950 with dazzling abstract expressionist canvases inspired by what was in the air: cubism, surrealism, jazz, and film noir. The careerist thing to do would've been to ride the Ab Ex tsunami, but de Kooning stubbornly defied purist abstraction with the startlingly quasi-figurative Woman paintings. Stevens and Swan artfully show how much went into these notorious works. De Kooning's Woman is "part vamp, part tramp," a Hollywood pinup girl with push-up bazooms, a dirty joke and a scary goddess based on a Mexican deity to whom hearts were sacrificed. She is also part Mom and part Elaine de Kooning, his artist/muse wife, and the numberless women he juggled. </p> He called himself a "slipping glimpser," and this book helps us see what he saw. Nobody has ever made de Kooning's slippery meanings and painstaking techniques clearer, in every phase, even the mysterious late paintings evincing the artist's advancing Alzheimer's-like illness. Now I finally get what essentially distinguished de Kooning from his rivalrous pals Gorky and Pollock, and more. I also know what de Kooning was like in bed (loud), how he managed to cheat on five steady lovers at a time(different doorbell codes), why he slept drunk in gutters even after he got rich, and how deeply he loved and how coldly he used women. Stevens and Swan manage to do what no dame ever did: they pin down his oblique soul. --Tim Appelo]]> 1746 3.99 345 74 1745 4.15 274 68 2004 42871 1400081696 9781400081691 7 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1169955024m/42871.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1169955024s/42871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42871.Your_Marketing_Sucks_ 3.47 55
• Cut through the myths that claim marketing is about advertising, public relations, or direct mail—learn that it is about growing the revenue, profit, and valuation of the business.

• Fire your advertising agency if it even thinks about applying for a Clio or other creative award.

• Implement the marketing moratorium—stop all marketing until you know how each component of your program justifies itself in dollars and cents.]]> 1746 3.99 345 74 2005 249537 0977418812 9780977418817 1 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173129391m/249537.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173129391s/249537.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249537.Antler_Dust 3.00 5 1746 3.99 345 74 2007 2325264 0452264383 9780452264380 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2325264.Sudden_Death 4.50 2 1746 3.99 345 74 1990 22017 0525936130 9780525936138 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22017.King_Icahn 4.00 2 Sudden Death: The Rise and Fall of E.F. Hutton. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo. Tour.]]> 1746 3.99 345 74 1993 1920305 0446678295 9780446678292 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190336359m/1920305.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190336359s/1920305.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1920305.Extreme_Management_What_They_Teach_At_Harvard_Business_School_s_Advanced_Management_Program 3.00 2 1746 3.99 345 74 2001 3080300 0070612900 9780070612907 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3080300.Power_of_Attorney_The_Rise_of_the_Giant_Law_Firms 2.00 2 1746 3.99 345 74 1986 2856984 002008790X 9780020087908 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2856984.The_Big_Eight 3.00 1 1746 3.99 345 74 1981 714844 159995690X 9781599956909 1 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1177577354m/714844.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1177577354s/714844.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/714844.God_Is_a_Salesman_Learn_from_the_Master 3.00 1 1746 3.99 345 74 2008 7234306 0609609831 9780609609835 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7234306-your-marketing-sucks 0.0 0
What in the world does Mark Stevens mean?

For starters, let’s take spending camouflaged as marketing. Everyone sees all those expensive, slick, pointless campaigns day after day. Just turn on your TV set and there are all the look-alike ads from Ford, GM, and Chrysler with look-alike cars going down . . . a road. Creative? Probably yes—nice scenery, good-looking people, etc., etc. But effective? Mark Stevens says absolutely not. Like you’re going to spend $30,000 or more for the privilege of seeing a car go down . . . a road? Wouldn’t it be easier for the Big Three in Detroit just to open the windows at their ad agencies and throw out gobs of thousand-dollar bills?

Don’t get Mark Stevens started on marketing that sucks, or he might mention all those oh-so-cool people-in-black at the ad agencies developing campaigns that generate all kinds of buzz—in the advertising community. But not in the marketplace. (Oops.)

Note to advertisers from Mark Stevens: If you have an advertising agency that applies for any kind of an award (Clios, whatever), fire them immediately. They shouldn’t be in the business to win ego awards for beautiful ads. They should be creating ads that sell. Period! If they talk about building “mind share,” fire them immediately as well. That’s just another way of saying they’ll camouflage their failure to generate sales behind an intellectual smoke screen.

Mark Stevens is the best friend of anyone with a product or service to sell who wants to use marketing as a basis for growing the business. What he provides both entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 types is a hard-nosed, “prove it to me” program that demands accountability for every dollar spent on marketing so that it brings in more revenue or customers, preferably both. Use his program and you won’t be throwing money out the window.

Your Marketing Sucks is chock-full of practical ideas such as:

* Marketing is not about advertising, public relations, or direct mail. It is about growing the revenues, profit, and valuation of the business.
* The marketing moratorium. Stop all your marketing for a month and you may be surprised at what happens. Sales have actually risen at some companies, a sure sign that, prior to the moratorium, they were throwing money out the window.
* Why the worst ads are actually the best. Start paying attention to the genius of the infomercial and cast a very skeptical eye on the kind of ads you see during the Super Bowl.
* Reverse engineer your marketing so that it starts at the point-of-sale. Because nothing happens unless a sale is made.
* Employ a swarming offense. Hit customers from every possible angle—print ads, sales displays, e-mails, infomercials.
* Pick the low-hanging fruit. Cross-sell to clients and customers.

Mark Stevens shows how to conceive an innovative, effective marketing campaign strategy—like Bill Gates’s battle cry of “putting a computer on every desk and in every home”—and then monitor the results. The idea is to spend your marketing budget only in ways that will give you a measurable return on your marketing dollars. That’s more than good marketing: It’s how you grow a business. And that’s what this book is all about!]]> 1746 3.99 345 74 2003