Ben Mack Wants to Help You!

Ben Mack's latest book, Think Two Products Ahead was published at the end of January. This book reveals branding secrets that major corporations pay big bucks for. For years, Ben worked on major corporate advertising accounts for some well-known ad agencies, imparting these secrets and how to leverage them to the agencies' corporate clients.

But Ben was torn. While Ben believes capitalism has proven to be the best economic system man has yet devised, compensating a person in direct relation to their own abilities and ambitions and efforts, he has also believed that the corporate version of capitalism currently practiced in the U.S. is the cause of many of the major challenges facing humanity today. Corporate capitalism has tended to disdain considerations other than the bottom line. Worse, the bottom line that is considered is generally, only for the latest quarter. Long-term results or consequences of current practices are ignored, or at best, inserted as a caveat in an Annual Report to Shareholders.

Ben thinks we'd be better served if individuals and small businesses dominated the landscape rather than the current situation we find ourselves in with giant corporations. The money that the huge corporations can throw around tends to corrupt democratic processes and they don't have the local focus and concerns that most small businesses or individual entrepreneurs have. But small businesses have a difficult time competing with corporations for business. They can't enjoy the economies of scale available to corporations that move large quantities of goods, and they can't afford the major advertising agencies and the marketing research and knowledge they bring with them.

That's why Ben wrote Think Two Products Ahead. He wants to make the branding secrets the "big boys" spend big money for, available to everyone. These are the things Ben learned in his years working for big agencies and managing major accounts. He used these techniques when he was the brand manager for Cingular. Of course he tailored them for Cingular's aims, but in this book, he reveals the fundamentals behind branding and gives exercises and techniques, as well as real world examples, that will teach you how to adapt and apply these powerful principles to your own unique situation.

I was lucky enough to get a pre-publication manuscript of this book from Ben, and I think reading it would benefit virtually anyone. Even if you don't run a business or have entrepreneurial plans, understanding how marketing works will be to your advantage. A short, modern history of brands is covered and then, importantly, Ben tells you what a brand really is. Not the common concept most people hold, where a brand is essentially synonymous with a product or a logo, but the way successful marketers and entrepreneurs understand and use them. A brand is more than a product or even a company. A brand is a relationship between a company and its customers and in this book, Ben helps you understand that concept and how to put it to work.