Title: The Handbook of Field Marketing
Authors: Alison Williams & Roddy Mullin
Published by: Kogan Page
Reviewed by: Tricia Weener, MD, Intelligent Marketing
This is unlikely to be one of those books you’d put at the top of your business or marketing reading musts – its title isn’t the most inspiring, and the content, as you might expect, is a little dry. However, Alison Williams and Roddy Mullin have created a book which gives a good all round guide to face-to-face direct marketing and sets it well within the context of the bigger marketing’ picture. They claim it’s the first ever book on field marketing (having done a bit of research myself for a presentation recently on experiential marketing’, I think they’re right) and it does bring together an otherwise disparate collection of marketing disciplines.
The book takes an inordinate amount of time to get to going (15 pages to get through the foreword, preface and introduction), but the chapter summaries and study questions are useful at the end of each chapter, as is the glossary of terms at the back – that said, it may have been more useful to put this up front. I also like the fact that they have spilt the book in two – the first half dealing with context and principles, while the second offers practical techniques.
The book includes case studies throughout, with the intention of providing real life’ examples to bring the subject matter to life, but I didn’t feel they achieved this. The case studies would also have benefited from visuals – photographs of campaigns (where relevant) would have helped bring them to life for the reader.
Overall, I’d say this is a good student text book or introduction for someone starting out in marketing, but it does little to inspire fresh thinking or excite with new possibilities for field marketing.
09-06-08
