In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition by Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman

Product Description


In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition is National Lampoon meets Peter Drucker. It's a funny and well-written business book that takes a look at some of the most influential marketing and business philosophies of the last twenty years. Through the dark glass of hindsight, it provides an educational and entertaining look at why these philosophies didn't work for many of the country's largest and best-known high-tech companies.

Marketing wizard Richard Chapman takes you on a hilarious ride in this book, which is richly illustrated with cartoons and reproductions of many of the actual campaigns used at the time. Filled with personal anecdotes spanning Chapman's remarkable career (he was present at many now-famous meetings and events), In Search of Stupidity, Second Edition examines the best of the worst marketing ideas and business decisions in the last twenty years of the technology industry.

The second edition includes new chapters on Google and on how to avoid stupidity, plus the extensive analyses of all chapters from the first edition. You'll want to get a copy because it
Features an interesting preface and interview with Joel Spolsky of "Joel on Software"
Offers practical advice on avoiding PR disaster
Features actual pictures of some of the worst PR and marketing material ever created
Is highly readable and funny
Includes theme-based cartoons for every chapter
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #211728 in Books
Published on: 2006-09-28
Number of items: 1
Binding: Paperback
408 pages
Editorial Reviews

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In Search of Stupidity is National Lampoon meets Peter Drucker. A funny and well written business book that takes a look at some of the most influential marketing and business philosophies of the last twenty years and, through the dark glass of hindsight, provides an educational and vastly entertaining examination of why they didn't work the for many of the country's largest and best known high tech companies. Make no mistake; most of them did not work.

Richly illustrated with cartoons and reproductions of many of the actual campaigns used at the time, marketing wizard Richard Chapman takes readers on a hilarious ride through the last twenty years. Filled with personal anecdotes spanning Chapman's remarkable career (he was present at many now famous meetings and events), In Search of Stupidity is a no-holds-barred look at the best of the worst hopeless marketing ideas and business decisions in the last twenty years of the technology industry.
"The history of marketing and technology is riddled with cautionary stories that stick up like dung covered punji sticks. Read this, and avoid stepping on one."
Jeff 'Hemos' Bates
Director OSDN Online
Exec. Editor Slashdot.org


"Rick Chapman knows where the bodies are buried -- when most people have forgotten there was even a murder. This history of tech marketing disasters is well-written, enjoyable, and gets its facts straight."
Jonathan Angel
Senior Editor, West Coast
Adweek's TECHNOLOGY MARKETING magazine


"In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disaster" gives us an amusing (and sometimes embarrassing) array of anecdotes of how far we've come (and not come) in high technology, as well as the path we've tread along the way. This is a fun read, with many invaluable lessons."
Brenda Bennett South
Vice President
Weber Shandwick


"In Search of Stupidity is an invaluable history lesson in how to avoid monumental marketing mistakes that are unfortunately common in the software industry. Perhaps caused by the lack of institutional knowledge Rick points out that is caused by the youth of the industry, the only thing that would be stupid now is to not read the book! If you don't do it for your career, do it out of fear that Rick will highlight you in a sequel!"
Alyssa Dver
BusinessWeek special sections contributor


"'In Search of Stupidity' is a delightful and deceptively useful chronicle of what went wrong in the high-tech industry. Having followed many of these companies and products over the years, I'd often wondered why such smart people made such weird choices. Rick Chapman has many of the answers. Anyone who has ever yelled at the computer screen will enjoy this book."
James Fallows
Former editor in chief of US News and World Report and a regular writer for The Atlantic.

Book Info
Text chronicles high-tech stupidity from the past to the present; helping us to understand what companies do to fail, and what they can do to avoid making yesterday's mistakes again. Illustrated. DLC: Computer software industry--Management--Case studies.

About the Author
Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman is the author of the first edition of this book. He has worked in the software industry since 1978 as a programmer, salesman, support representative, senior marketing manager, and consultant for many different companies, including WordStar (really MicroPro, but no one remembers the name of the company), Ashton-Tate, IBM, Inso, Novell, Bentley Systems, Berlitz, Hewlett-Packard, and Ziff-Davis. His first computer was a Trash One (you antiques out there know what that is), and he began his career writing software inventory management systems for beer and soda distributors in New York City. He is the author of The Product Marketing Handbook for Software, coauthor of the Software Industry and Information Association's US Software Channel Marketing and Distribution Guide, and periodically writes articles about software and high-tech marketing for a variety of publications.
Customer Reviews

Computer marketing explained in an entertaining way
As a techie, I find most marketing books boring. This one was lively enough to keep me interested. The author uses plenty of hyperbole and sarcasm, so it's sometimes hard to tell fact from opinion, but in general, his analyses ring true.

A grim, but highly instructive and entertaining story
I have been in IT since '79 and have seen all the companies Rick talks about come and go. The errors that were made, and still -are- made are mind boggling. All these proverbs about history repeating itself? They are right, when you don't learn from mistakes!

Reading what you already know but didn't realise
What I liked most about this book that it puts a lot of known "history" in perspective, especially with regards to Microsoft.
The author puts a lot of humor into this book and understands how to put things into perspective. I do hope that there will be a third revised edition in the coming years.