The Invisible Touch – The Four Keys of Modern Marketing

Citation

Melchinger, J. (2001), "The Invisible Touch – The Four Keys of Modern Marketing", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 18 No. 6, pp. 534-542. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm.2001.18.6.534.1

For my 24 years of marketing the intangible, starting with life insurance and later investments, I have been waiting for an insightful work about this elusive topic that tells it like it is. This is it. Harry Beckwith, author of Selling the Invisible, hits another home run with The Invisible Touch – The Four Keys to Modern Marketing. This time it’s a grand slam and clears the park. From the premise Beckwith lays out in the introduction, to the thoughts, examples and poignant conclusions with which he ends every brief section of only a page or two, you will appreciate his reasoning as it evolves and the variety of real‐life cases that substantiate every idea. Brevity is the soul of wit and The Invisible Touch is seriously witty, blessedly brief in its descriptions, absolutely clear in its observations, and conclusive. The data‐filled charts that pedantically support many marketing works thankfully never appear. This book is about the facts and feelings of buyer motivations. The Invisible Touch demonstrates the realities of human behavior – action – then observes just enough in order to draw its conclusions. The book is an easy, quick and fun read for marketers, sellers and buyers alike.

Beckwith sets the tone of this important work in his introduction:

The first good lesson in marketing, then, may be this. Look. Just look around. And look carefully. See what is there – rather than what you expect to find.

It is not a perfect method. Nothing is. Among other things, you can conclude far too much from the little you see. You see an exception, for example, but declare it the rule. You see something, write a book, and then you notice yourself being quoted. You feel terrified. You realize that much of what you have regarded as wisdom all these years was just other people quoting other people like you – people making the best educated guesses.

The shock is enough to make you stop reading (Introduction, pp. xii‐xiv).

… Most workers no longer build; they serve. We have become a service economy, right down to the business unit, and the smallest business unit of all: the individual. We provide a service that we offer to the market – to clients, prospects customers, contractors, and employers.

We give concerts. The question is, how much better can we give them? (p. xiv)

The question “how much better can we give them?” is the simple basis for marketing what can only be felt. How much better can we do what we do? How much better can we communicate it to those we want to attract? And one more important question; the important question: How much better can we make people feel about what do?

A glance at the book’s sections and contents tells much about Beckwith’s new focus on the marketing of services rather than the old product paradigm in a world now awash with new technologies and lifestyles that continuously reshape how we think and act.

In the chapter on “Research and its limits”, Beckwith points out that certainty is fatal, soft evidence is much more reliable than hard evidence, and he asks us not to research but to listen. Citing the marketing perspective of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, he concludes, “Find a boy to tell you what your emperor is wearing.”

“Fallacies of marketing” presents a range of compelling ideas from the fallacy of best practices, through fallacies such as novelty, competition and assuming that strategy is execution. The fallacy of the virtual alternative debunks the marketing myths of Web presence (beyond the hype) and concludes with “the apt and succinct words of N.W. Ayer: Make human contact” (p. 64).

“What is satisfaction?” declares in a mere ten pages what marketers and salespeople have long sought to understand: that “If your goal is satisfied clients, your goal is far too modest;” (p. 68) that the goal is not to measure client satisfaction but to start increasing it. He concludes that “You must get better to avoid falling behind” (p. 72) and tells how to set realistic expectations in clients.

“The first key: price” delivers up the truth about pricing and why it is so difficult for excellent service providers to price themselves up into a marketplace. The trouble with hourly fees is discussed in stunning detail, as is tiered pricing. This section alone will yield a hundred‐fold the return you seek on your investment in this book.

“The second key: brand” might amaze you. Beckwith debunks the myth that service businesses don’t have brands, stating, “You do not choose to have a brand. You have one. Perhaps you think of it as your reputation, but it is your brand: it comprises everything your name evokes in your market” (p. 99). Beckwith contends that “twenty‐four out of twenty‐five American businesses ignore branding,” (p. 99), citing arbitration, law, and vocational services as three examples of industries to which the idea of having a brand is absurd. On naming an enterprise he states dos and don’ts and concludes with whys and hows. If you can’t use these guidelines to conjure up a name for your enterprise, use them to test it. He ends with a reality check on names and compares search engine use with search engine results (a Web thing). Do you Yahoo? Most do, and thus miss the superior results that corporate librarians (for example) get with AltaVista. That Yahoo!opted for brand and scale is obvious by three telling stories Beckwith relates. Eye opening.

“The third key: packaging” supports the truth we all know but hate to admit: that beauty wins, and beautiful in marketing means pretty. Oranges, golf, XKEs or health clubs all illustrate: to make your service better, build a prettier mousetrap, make it more beautiful. Build it prettier and people will come. Your package is your service (p. 152).

“The fourth key: relationships”. Technology today improves every aspect of communications except that which people most long for … connection.

It is fitting that Beckwith ends this work with his most important observation: Business is Personal. He makes points about the importance of words and word crafting; the need “to communicate clearly; to write and speak not just so we are understood, but so we cannot be misunderstood” (p.199). Within “The eight keys to lasting relationships”, Beckwith states and explains with a simple thoroughness that excites:

1. 1.

   (1) natural affinity;

2. 2.

   (2) trust (and how to build it);

3. 3.

   (3) speed;

4. 4.

   (4) apparent expertise;

5. 5.

   (5) sacrifice;

6. 6.

   (6) completeness;

7. 7.

   (7) magic words; and

8. 8.

   (8) passion.

Beckwith ends his concise work with this about passion:

Excellence is not easily seen; it often escapes detection. The passion for it, however, is unmistakable. Prospects and clients know it when they see it.

Clients enjoy merely being in the presence of genuine passion. American corporations spend billions of dollars a year inviting people to speak to their company, simply to share their passion.

Passion is worth billions. It attracts clients. Even more clearly, it helps keep those clients – for life.

If you are like me, your arriving at the end will disappoint because it was over too soon, and you will take up again at the beginning to re‐read the work to highlight passages and dog‐ear pages (or purchase the tapes to play in your car). It’s that good.

Edited by Geoffrey P. Lantos

Stonehill College, Massachusetts, USA