After many attempts using various suggestions in this thread, this finally worked for me:
- in iTunes deselect WiFi sync option
- connect iPhone using USB
- in iTunes deselect all music, videos, books, etc
- sync (this removes all iTunes content from the phone)
- in iTunes reselect the playlists, books, videos, etc. that you want on the iPhone
- sync again
- result: all the playlists I selected were successfully synced to the iPhone
This method worked for me with: iPhone 5, MacBook Pro running iOS7 and iTunes version 11.1.1 (11) 64-bit