The Market is Chaos: The Tao of Marketing 
By Steve Burns


Marketing has lost its way. It has become buried under layers of processes, checklists and analysis. There is no room left for creativity, intuition or original ideas. Marketing strategies are defined by SWOT charts, demographics and hundreds of pages of market studies. Decisions are made by spreadsheets and checklists. Creative marketing is dead.
But there is still hope. In this book there are no boring processes to follow or checklists to memorize. There are no confusing charts to study or statistics to interpret. Instead we travel back in time to 500BC in ancient China where Lao Tzu (Taoism) and Sun Tzu (The Art of War) use their wisdom to teach us how we can manage the chaos of the market, identify real customers and use the competition to build a strong market position. They show how real products are more than just a list of features and how a customer can be more than just someone who buys the product. They also donΓÇÖt see the competition as an enemy. Instead they see it as a tool to help build a stronger market.
Using their ancient wisdom they show us that there is still a place for originality, creativity and intuition in a successful marketing plan.