We are in an era of killer competition. Category after category is perceived as a commodity. This fact is the central reason the critically important function of marketing is such a mess. It's also why the average chief marketing officer barely lasts beyond two years in the job.

In this audiobook, marketing guru Jack Trout clears up the confusion that surrounds the marketing profession. Instead of focusing on segmentation or customer retention or search engine optimization or data mining, marketers should be searching for that simple, obvious differentiating idea. This search should begin with what Trout considers the best book ever written on marketing - even though it was published in 1916 and isn't about marketing. Entitled Obvious Adams: The Story of a Successful Business Man, it lays out the five tests of an obvious idea that will lead you to the right marketing strategy for any product. Trout goes beyond the obvious by laying out what gets in the way of this search, like the Internet, advertising people, marketing people, Wall Street, research, even the future. These are all huge distractions that keep marketers from their most important task: differentiating their products.

To bring these principles for finding the obvious to life, Trout finds obvious solutions to today's troubles for the likes of GM, Coke, Wal-Mart, newspapers, and the bewildering beer business. The fundamental problem is that professional marketers overlook the most obvio...