This time, the Rieses shift their focus to the complicated relationship between marketing and management. Pulling away the 'velvet curtain' that divides the two, they reveal not only the struggle that is endemic in corporations across the world, but how it harms companies' bottom lines, and why, in particular, management needs to understand how to think like marketing - and vice versa. At the heart of this strife lies management's perception that their decisions are based on sound business practice and research while marketing decisions are simply based on common sense. This leads to fundamentally different approaches to creating brands and products - namely that management overvalues cost-cutting and 'creating a better product' when they should really be worrying about better branding. Some of their observations, culled from years on the front lines include: management deals in reality; marketing deals in perception; management thinks brand first; marketing thinks category first; management wants to build better products; marketing wants to build different products; management wants a full line; marketing wants a narrow line; management targets the center of the market; and, marketing targets the ends.

这一次，里斯夫妇将他们的注意力转移到营销和管理之间的复杂关系上。它们拉开了将两者分开的“天鹅绒窗帘”，不仅揭示了全球企业普遍存在的斗争，而且揭示了这种斗争如何损害企业的底线，特别是为什么管理层需要了解如何像营销一样思考——反之亦然。这场纷争的核心在于管理层的看法，即他们的决策是基于合理的商业实践和研究，而营销决策只是基于常识。这导致了创建品牌和产品的根本不同的方法，即管理层高估了成本削减和“创建更好的产品”，而他们真正应该担心的是更好的品牌。他们从多年的一线工作中总结出的一些观察结果包括：现实中的管理层交易；感知营销；管理者以品牌为先；市场营销首先考虑范畴；管理层希望生产更好的产品；市场营销想要创造不同的产品；管理层想要一条完整的生产线；市场营销想要一条窄线；管理的目标是以市场为中心；而且，营销的目标是最终目标。