A look behind the 49 New Marketing Strategies

I read virtually everything available about marketing, especially construction marketing, and will pay for stuff, including Steve Flashman's new e-book, Marketing for Construction. (Since I just ordered and received the e-book just a few minutes ago, it is far too early to write a review, but I'm sure you will find value in it if you purchase it.)

Of course, some of the best stuff out there is free, so I appreciated canvassing consultant Joseph Needham's contribution when he forwarded another e-book, "49 New Marketing Strategies". This e-book carries a copyright by Kapstone Marketing Inc. (Kapstonemarketinginc.com) but no author credit. It seemed strange that someone would publish an e-book with (mostly) incredibly useful information and ideas, and not take authorship credit for the work.

Kapstone Marketing is operated by Jay Medley in Los Angeles. "In case you were wondering Jay Medley did not write that book, it was written by someone else and he somehow makes it look as though he was the author. However when you ask him, he won't take credit for it," Needham emailed me.

I Googled some body text from the e-book, and discovered the wording had been replicated several times by other marketing consultants in various U.S. cities. Then I read the document carefully. While most of the advice in the book made a lot of sense, the author in a few places suggested that marketers use broadcast faxes to promote products and services. This raised a huge red flag to me. The Federal Communications Commission has some pretty stringent regulations about using the fax for advertising --- advertising faxes can lead to a $500 civil penalty for each fax -- so imagine the liability if you send out, say, 1,000 faxes -- a smart lawyer could launch a class action and nail you for $500,000. (There are exceptions to the law but generally you want to be very careful if you are contemplating using the fax for marketing anything in the U.S.)

My research led me to this fascinating Google Answers research posting:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=537660.

The source of the Kapstone Marketing e-book is Rich Harshaw's Monopolize Your Marketplace. MYM has sold the material and a system to provide services as marketing consultants to several people across the U.S., with apparently mixed reviews (some are enthusiastic, others not so.)

So, what can we interpret from this material? I'll ask Jay Medley for his observations, of course, and respect that he could be truly competent at marketing and decided that the system he acquired is both worth the money and worthy of sharing with others.