bits&thoughts

i am currently reading "Trout on strategy", which i personally find very stupid. It involves tons of repetitions, it has a very deficitary structure and it contains logics errors. However, it's quite ok for a beginner. Most of the statements are truisms and things that are known by the people who actually get something out of life in general. Unfortunately, we can all make mistakes and this very simple book can be a guide we should open from time to time in order to remember the simplest basics of strategy. i don't think i ever will, but that's another story. Plus, he only states the same things he had already written together with Al Ries, in their previous books. i would certainly classify it as a book for starters or for students rather than a professional book. it includes outrageously absurd connections with numerology and psychology, which i wasn't able to forgive. and it also hosts some fairly contradictory and poorly-concept-defined phrases such as: "perception means reality. Don't let facts misled you" (auch! i honestly still didn't get this).
After critising it like this, i think i could also mention the few things i'm gonna keep in mind after reading it (after all, they do say that you can learn something from every book, don't they?)

• Aristotle would have made a horrible commercial-maker. Pure logics doesn't offer the guarantee of winning a fight (so sad, and yet so true)
• you can't just write “Scott” on your shopping list, if this name doesn't mean anything
• the way in which a product is produced can become a differentiating idea (and this made me think of the Heidi commercials, which are very cute and very good in my opinion)
• when stating your sales, you get to choose your own parameters (which means that you can choose the period that offers you a clear advantage, and that you can make the comparison with yourself, you don't necessarily have to compare yourself with your competitors)
• use the ratings you get from anywhere in the most aggressive manner possible
• history - both that of a nation and that of marketing - are written by winners, not by losers.
• the problem we should focus on is the competitor, not just the consumer. cause, after all, the same consumer is served by lots and lots of companies: ours and those that belong to our competitors.
• strategy means simplicity - use common sense more than you use research, or interpret research according to common sense
• the more unpredictable the world becomes, the more people people look for and focus on predictions in order to decide what they should do
• our society communicates excessively
• nobody will follow you, if you don't know where you're going
• keep in touch with reality