You've chosen this book. Which probably means you're a marketer, you've heard of scenarios and you want to know what they can do for you. Can they help with everyday marketing issues like brands, channels and relationships? The answer is yes. Rooted in customer needs, scenarios bridge the gap between corporate strategy and marketing tactics. They are a weapon for perceiving the unseen and a framework for thinking the unthinkable. This book's wealth of case studies will show you how they've helped top companies like Pfizer, Nestle and Courvoisier to do just that, and its practical lessons will show how they can do exactly the same for you.

Gill Ringland and Laurie Young have gathered top-flight contributors to offer the first straightforward account of scenario planning for marketers. In readable chapters they show how, by integrating scenarios into the wider marketing toolkit, you can make your organization more customer-driven and consider a wider range of possibilities than your competitors. They explore how scenarios have driven creativity in a range of consumer marketing applications - even in FMCG sectors - and define their role in distribution, channel management, brand management and customer management strategy. Finally, they show how marketing scenarios can help to promote wider corporate innovation.

The rich pictures painted by scenarios have made business strategy more visionary and creative, and they're set to do the same with marketing strategy. Read this book, and make sure it's your organization holding the brush.

Despite the fact that vast engineering networks are the foundations of modern society, the services that technology companies provide over them have been a relatively neglected area of study. As a result, marketing in some technology businesses has been depressingly tactical and inconsistent. Marketers with little experience, and even less professional training, run around presenting PowerPoint decks to each other, chasing after the latest fad and throwing erratic, changing activities at the market each quarter. Many work on the unchallenged assumption that markets are fast changing and that customers only want the lowest prices.

Yet this industry has liberated human imagination in the internet and convinced the world that they must have a PC and a mobile phone. Now, as a result of profound, relentless, global forces, some of the leading firms and greatest minds in it are at last turning their attention to service. With the advent of 'cloud computing' and radical changes in the engineering of some utilities, the marketing of services that are based on a technical infrastructure is about to become as important and sophisticated as in, say, consumer products. This book explores their story and experience.

"I really enjoyed the book "From Products to Services" by Mr Laurie Young. Encouraged by it, Haier accelerated its changeover from a traditional product-driven to a more customer-centric company. This new book "Marketing Technology as a Service" is another major contribution to technology companies for the cultivation of service needs worldwide." - Mr Zhang Ruimin, CEO and Chairman, Haier Group, Beijing

"Young and Burgess describe a shift in mindset and pragmatic techniques that are quite doable - Rae Sedel, MD, Global Technology Practice, Russell Reynolds Associates.

"This book provides practical and insightful advice on how to use services to turn technology into value add solutions for real people - Rudy Provoost, CEO, Philips Lighting

"Business leaders in India have been remarkably successful at offering technology based services like outsourcing across the world. Currently worth $60 billion, they intend to reach $300 billion by 2020. To succeed, the Indian business community must offer new value propositions and adapt to emerging trends, like cloud computing. Burgess and Young have put together the first comprehensive and practical guide for business leaders to meet their challenges of exponential growth." - Dr Mukesh Aghi, Chairman and CEO, Steria (India)

Many people can take a good photo - in fact, many people can take a great photo. But this book is about something else. This book is about how to be a photographer. To be a photographer, you have to understand more than just the image - you have to understand the interaction between the image and the viewer, and you have to choose what you want that interaction to be. This is a short book. My intent is that it will take you at most a few hours to read from cover to cover. I hope that, by the end of it, thinking about the intent behind your photos has become a natural and automatic part of your photography