From Marginal To Mainstream (why Tomorrow’s Brand Growth Will Come From The Fringes - And How To Get There First)

By (author) Edwards, Helen
Short description/annotation
Understand how legacy and mainstream brands from B2B and B2C through to product and service companies can successfully harness the potential of marginal behaviours for new routes to growth.
Description
Legacy brands are struggling. The hand-to-hand combat for advantage has become a zero-sum game - producing small share gains and losses but nothing to bring about sensational new growth. This book shows why businesses, marketers and entrepreneurs need to break free from their ''mainstream inhibition'' and turn their attention to the margins - to confront, evaluate and embrace the ''strangeness'' of behaviours, ideas and ways of life at the fringes. Why? Because marginal behaviours can break through and take off. They can go mainstream. They can unleash ''consumer-driven disruption'', promoting new innovation, new routes to market, new winners and losers - and new growth. Using original research and analysis of the brands that have successfully backed marginal behaviours, From Marginal to Mainstream provides a framework for understanding and evaluating this non-obvious, untapped potential. Marginal behaviours may be unpromising, untested, weird, even sometimes repulsive - yet they can point the way to the future. Today''s margins are tomorrow''s pot of gold - if you know where and how to look.
Table of contents

• • Chapter - 00: Introduction;
• Section - ONE: The margins and why they matter;
• • Chapter - 01: From ‘Does anyone do that?’ to ‘Doesn’t everyone do that?’;
  • Chapter - 02: Why modern mainstream marketing is a low-growth zone;
  • Chapter - 03: Going for growth - Why the margins? And why now?;
• Section - TWO: How to read the margins;
• • Chapter - 04: Overview;
  • Chapter - 05: A smouldering fire in the fringes - The elemental beacons;
  • Chapter - 06: What’s hidden, what’s there and what could be - The revelatory beacons;
  • Chapter - 07: Shakers of place and pace - The opportunity beacons;
  • Chapter - 08: An irresistible momentum - The growth beacons;
• Section - THREE: A strategy for growth;
• • Chapter - 09: Overview;
  • Chapter - 10: Entrepreneurs get it – They are marginals too;
  • Chapter - 11: Growth from the margins - A marketer’s playbook;
  • Chapter - 12: The M2M advantage - Seven things every leader should know

Review quote
"Essential reading for any organization seeking growth in today''s difficult economic environment. Full of practical tools and examples."
Review quote
"Every business is desperate for growth but few know where to find it. In this exhaustively researched book, Helen Edwards encourages us all to look to the margins, to the marginal behaviours that will become mainstream in time. But this is no theoretical perspective, it''s a practical playbook, offering a clear approach to finding the future of our businesses. As Edwards says, ''The margins matter and they can be read''."
Review quote
"Any book that teaches you how to market insects for food, understand the rise of witchcraft, and the techniques for recovering an additional 21 years of life is well worth reading. This is an eye-opening analysis of an increasingly powerful aspect of successful brand and marketing strategy - one that will become ever more key to the evolution and growth of the great businesses of the future. For marketers, the tools, techniques and frameworks present an excellent guide to navigating the otherwise high-risk challenges of identifying future markets, trends and categories for investment."
Review quote
"I almost want to keep this book under wraps: it feels like the best-kept secret for growth is now well and truly out! Explained, codified and