Swimming Downstream: How to Stop Struggling and Start Winning with Marketing that Actually Works

“Juxtaposing cutting-edge research with time-tested methods ...
the author’s insights really come to life.”
–BENJAMIN CLEMENS NUEBEL, Partner, CRU Brand Consulting GmbH

Successful marketing is more attainable than most businesspeople realize!

Most companies waste time and money doing stuff that doesn’t actually help them compete. They chase trends, deliver “deliverables,” optimize furiously, and call it all strategy. They simply follow the herd, because “everybody knows what works in marketing.”

Yet the evidence shows that what really drives growth is surprising, even counterintuitive. It’s unconventional wisdom, and it can help any brand get moving faster – if you know how to apply it.

In Swimming Downstream, author Judd Labarthe synthesizes the sharpest points from marketing science, illustrates them with real-life cases drawn from the marketplace and his own practice, and organizes them into a pragmatic, actionable growth framework you can read about today and start implementing tomorrow.

• Brand and business owners will learn to recognize and harness marketing’s real success drivers, and to avoid making the very intuitive, very common, and often very costly mistakes that limit competitiveness and growth.
• Marketing professionals will develop a management-convincing arsenal of arguments for doing more of what will help their brand and business grow, and against doing what won’t (but is often sold as “best practice”).
• Students of marketing and others new to the field will gain a valuable and holistic set of evidence- and experience-based alternatives to the conventional wisdom, including what’s commonly taught in school.

Tired of struggling against the current? Let Swimming Downstream show you how to get your business flowing toward lasting success instead.

Judd Labarthe is a globally experienced marketing consultant and founder of Planner At Large. He has helped guide brands like Volkswagen, Mastercard, Nestlé and Leica, with work recognized by dozens of effectiveness awards. He has also taught strategy and marketing in Europe and Asia and contributed to acclaimed industry publications.