Recent Books I've been reading Mar 2007 - August 2007

The Marketing Code by Stephen Brown Marshall Cavendish 2006 This book is a riot. Written by a marketing lecturer in Northern Ireland author of the excellent Wizard it is of course a spoof about the Da Vinci code - a gallop in the spirit of Dan Brown from Edinburgh to Belfast to Chicago dodging corpses and killers on the way. Of course the Code has to be about conspiracy theory and the book plots the uncovering of the marketing conspiracty presided over by the mysterious Kate Phillips. Any resemblance to Phil Kotler of course is entirely circumstantial. In fact there's even a review by the great man himself on the cover of my copy. This is a fun read with lots of outrageous punning and send ups about marketing academia and marketing consultancy. I don't think it will revolutionise your views on marketing but you will enjoy reading it. Highly recommended.

kingdom.com by Thom Braun Canterbury Press 2003
This is a novel about a planning director! No really. Who gets an idea about building the agency's credentials by helping the church to get itself up to date. By using modern promotional techniques. It is written by a marketing director within Unilever. This caught my attention because on an off for the past 10 years I have actually been involved in helping to develop advertising for churches. So you might say I have an interest - though no one working in this territory has ever mentioned the book to me. Its a very peculiar read. I couldn't decide if it was a satire about how a religious organisation embraces commercialism wholeheartedly or an exploration of faith and business. And the sense of unease grew as the planning director who collaborates and eventually marries the lady vicar unleashes a rash of what amounts to sponsorships and sales promotions to boost attendance. It turns out to be extremely successful so eventually the Church of England goes for a flotation. But the more successful the new approach is the more handwringing goes on by the very two people who started it of. Without ever saying what exactly they are unhappy about. If you;re uncomfortable about running sales promotions around services then why start in the first place. And it really isn't clear what would be acceptable and where the line has to be crossed. In short its a muddle and a very annoying one.

While the flotation is happening the planning director and his new missus (now heavily pregnant) go off to a hotel in Norfolk. Which is full so they have to stay in the stable mews where prematurely she gives birth to a son. Familiar anybody? And just too surreal. I really can't recommend this book. It can't decide what it is and is neither side splittingly funny or insightful about the interrelationship between faith and business..

Ten Steps to Innovation Heaven by Howard Wright Marshall Cavendish March 2007
I was introduced to this book when I was invited by Hall and Partners to a breakfast where you could meet the author. After doing so I persuaded Howard Wright to accompany me to one of Russell's coffee mornings. This is yet another book about innovation. So why read this one? Because Howard has earned his spurs as a facilitator who has learned the hard way how to get new ideas and implement them in large organisations. It isn't obvious from the book which organisation it is. Well I'll tell you. Its the Royal Mail. The 10 steps are his very practical way of ensuring that you have decent ideas in the first place and have an fighting chance of bringing them to market. I liked this book a lot. Largely because of Howard's frankness. He is very open about the blind alleys and also the high failure rate of most innovation initiatiaives. It is a signal reminder that a lot of innvation books contrive to conceal. His approach is bottom up. I stole the core idea of one of his chapters for a blog posting called Waggle Dance. Which for me is a powerful concept. Its not for management to make new ideas work. It has to be embedded in the grass roots and grow out of there. If you run the occasional brainstorm then this book isn't for you. But I've found myself referring to it several times in the last couple of months when thinking about how to bring organisational change.

The Long Tail by Chris Anderson Random House 2006
The book has been out for a year now. So I should have reviewed it a long time ago. In mititigation I read it when it first came out and have reread it now - so I hope the review will be better. Also there may be a bit more perspective. The book was hyped massively when it came out. Which irritated me because it is supposed to be promoting long tails and not hits. So why try so hard to market it as a hit. So when I first read it I really didn't want to like it. But its a great piece of work. It is very accessible - once you've read the first few chapters you will have got the idea. The bricks and mortar economy has been built on hits. But online businesses are profiting from the aggregated sales of hundreds of thousands of products at very low individual quantities. To make this work you need producers who produce content which can be sold in very low quantities. You need distributors and retailers who can make the products available. And you need indexers why make it possible to find where these individual producs are. Through search engines, lists and recommendations. That's it in a nutshell. But then Anderson walks around the idea and explores it from a lot of different angles. By the end I'm not convinced you will know that much more. But you will understand the concept extremely well. The Long Tail is a seminal book. Because it explains how 3 different kinds of activity work on the internet and how they can make money. It is the closest thing to a unified economic theory of how the web works. If you haven't read it then you need to. It won't take you that long. But its well written and full of examples of internet brands you know.

Phantoms of the brain by VS Ramachandran Fourth Estate 1999
I've been participating in a reading group about Neuroscience and after Zeldman and Robert Heath have delved into neurology with this book. Ramachandran achieved fame when he discovered that by making a mirror image of a missing limb and asking patients to unclench their hands - patients who suffered exruciating pain as non existent nails dug into the palms of a non existent hand - where able to open their phantom hands for the first time. This is a romp through the plumbing of the brain. It is deliberately populist and frequently hilarious. What it deals a hammer blow to is the notion that the brain is a unity or even a clear hierarchy of systems. The brain can be fooled. And there are regular exercises you can ry out to find the gaps in the interlocking systems. Which makes is a very accessible way to think about how we perceive the world and how we think. The last chapter where he outlines his theory of consciousncess is the most difficult but most of it is a blast providing a stream of anecdotes you'll want to discuss with others.

How to drive your competition crazy by Guy Kawasaki Hyperion 1995 I already reviewed this but read it again because I have a course to write. Its actually very useful because it doesn't assume that all you need to do is go on the internet and find out what your competition are doing. So there's a lot of suggestions for researching a market offline. Which we still need to do! My review of the book is here.

Chronicles by Bob Dylan Simon and Schuster 2004 Here's a personal account by one of those who could fairly claim to have had a had in creating the 1960s. And who famously did his best to shake off every label that got put on him. One of the main weapons in defending one's own persona from cultural icondom is reclusivity. Which is why Bob's version was so eagerly awaited. Well you won't land this fish easily. Its called Chronicles but they're not in sequence. And at the start there's an illuminating contrast between Dylan's candour talking to a folkie to get a gig in one of the Greenwich clubs and his mendacity when talking to a journalist about how he arrived in New York in a boxcar - cunning or cynical - you decide. And is this account remotely truthful of how it really felt then to be on the cusp of cultural change but not knowing how and when it would happen. And what he covers are the formative times - not the madness of rushing from festival to festival surfing the 1960s. Later on the book covers Oh Mercy the album he recorded with Daniel Lanois in New Orleans. There's almost a suggestion that the albums from 2 decades in between were attempts to cover his tracks. Whether its reliable its certainly revealing about his heroes and also the craft which goes into being a creative. He claims to have studied the 1930s so he had a seam to mine when the songs came. True or not it shows you that there's more to writing songs than 3 chords and the truth. You have to line your stomach first.

The new business road test by John Mullins FT Prentice Hall 2003 This book is designed to help you get your business idea sorted out before you write your business plan. And it will give you a lot of extra work. But work which is well worth worth it before you start to consider all of those vexed questions about where your customers are going to come from, how much you're going to charge and where the money is going to come from. What I like about this book is how structured it is - you really have to think about the industry you're going into and how attractive it is before you start to consider how many clients you have already tucked up your sleeve. I am already using this in workshops I run. I've lent it to a client already so had to buy another copy. Its that useful. Ooh and there's plenty of casestudies. This is one business book which wasn't rushed out to be stuffed in a bookrack in an airport bookshop. Good solid stuff.

How to read a novel by John Sutherland Profile Books 2006 Here's an English Professor and a chair of the Booker Prize telling you how to read a book. And it wasn't quite what I expected. Sutherland has a penchant for setting puzzles so he's happy to write an endorsement of his own book on the flycover as well as including a quote urging suspicion of endorsements. What is useful about this book is the postmodern suspicion of a text so a lot of the ground is about publishers, titles, publication dates which are all clues in how to make sense of a work. We eventually get to the critics - there's an interesting section about a British novel slated by an American critic who patently doesn't understand the rules of squash - which Sutherland argues is fairly critical to making sense of the novel. It lifts the corner on those tedious internecine squabbles between different countries, critics and novelists. If you want a far less illustrious comparison think of the block voting evident in the Eurovision Song Contest. How much of the sound and fury leading up to the Booker shortlist is basically the same thing. In the end (no surprises) Sutherland leaves it up to you. But gives some interesting takes on how you might inform your judgement. There are no right answers. Providing some contemporary definition of good style would of course make the book date very quickly. But Sutherlands refusal to commit seems also very contemporary! Is this book useful for criticism for other areas? Undoubtedly but its a good thought starter.

To see every bird on earth by Dan Koeppel Penguin 2005 I was working on a pitch for the RSPB hence the need to understand what motivates a birder. This book is written from an American perspective. The author's father an obsesseive birder managed to get past the 8,000 mark. The book is very readable, hilarious at times. The arcane rules of birding are struggling to cope with the ability of even amateurs to fly to the farthest parts of the globe and use the latest technology to get the birds to reveal themselves - there is hot debate about it is legitimate to identify a bird purely by sound. Or whether it is legitimate to play back bird sounds to tempt birds into the open as they search for rivals. There is also a glimpse of the state of zoology because if if birds are being differentiated by bird song then the number of species is technically increasing up from less than 8,000 20 years ago to over 11,000 today and still climbing. And anyone working in a market where the collector mentality is important will find this account illuminating - the collector can't collect anything - but only what is acceptable by other collectors as belonging to the collection.

Swimming against the Stream by Tim Waterstone Macmillan 2006 The man behind the bookshops tells you what its like to start a business from scratch. When you've been made redundant from WH Smith. And asked not to start a bookshop. The first incentive for starting a business - revenge. Its a breezy account - rampage more like and surprisingly illuminating considering it is so partisan. It does convey the feeling of what it is like to start a business and the shoals to avoid. I thought the last chapter on financing and going public was really interesting. There's enough books out there about how to size up entrepreneurs - sorting out venture capitalists and banks (who Waterstone loathes) was another highlight. An easy breezy read.

Brand Babble by Don and Heidi Schultz Thomson 2004 Don Schultz is Mr integrated communications. You can read an interview with him in the Marketing Masters book below. Almost anything you read by Don Schultz on IM is worth reading. Unfortunately this is Schultz offpiste. I understand where he's coming from. Throughout his professional career he has had to play second fiddle to brand consultants who were higher up the foodchain and could murmur all sorts of foolishness into the ears of the CEO and head of marketing. But this doesn't excuse the diatribe against branding, ad agencies, the devil and all his works. At its heart says Schultz branding is about measurable relationships between customers and brands. If only it were so simple. It really isn't. Brands can create desire and despite the smoke and mirrors salesmen clients know this. Yes its annoying but Don you're going to have to learn to live with the power of brands.

Marketing Masters by Louella Miles Laura Mazur Wiley Jan 2007 They decided it was high time to go an talk to the marketing legends. Who you ought to have read. And if you haven't well here's a series of interviews where they talk about what they believe they've achieved. Unique and riveting. Off you go to In their own words to enjoy the interview and the review

Perfect Pitch by Jon Steel Wiley 2006 Well you have a treat in store - an interview with the man himself, a link to Russell Davies podcast late last year, extracts from the presentation he gave for the APG in February 2007 and a longer review of the book. Off you go to In their own words to enjoy it.

Everything bad is good for you by Steven Johnson Penguin 2006 Someone called Mark Thompson who runs the BBC called this a must-read. Impressive. So I read it. This is a very coherent argument that far from dumbing down that popular culture and the media that mediates it is getting smarter. No wonder the DG got on board so sharpish. Music to Aunties ears. The increasing complexity of the narrative structures of TV, the willingness of audiences to follow complicated stories and to construct meaning where few clues are given. This is a classic defence of how the media is getting smarter and so are we. Detractors will still claim that there's too much filth and that morality has been thrown to the winds. Johnson's answer is that the media isn't intended to be a mirror but a place where societies value can be explored and played with. We don't ban cowboy films for being 2 dimensional and unreal, why should we ban reality shows which push real people into unreal situations for endless public debate. Its a persuasive argument. What I liked about it is that unlike the sophistry of a Malcolm Gladwell or a Blink, Johnson keeps focussed and his punches keep landing. Too early to call it a classic but you really ought to read it so you have something to say when your mum asks you why you watch that awful rubbish on Big Brother. Or East Enders. Or Weakest Link. Answer Because its the future mum!

Good business by Steve Hilton & Giles Gibbons South western Education 2004 This was a book I really wanted to like but in the end got very frustrated with. It is all about how to run your business to benefit society. The problem I had with it was that it became an exercise in levitation. All businesses would like in principle to be run for the good of society, to be carbon neutral, to sponsor the arts, to put their staff on secondment the list goes on. But..... where's the catch. The catch as far as this book is concerned is that there isn't a catch. Its a no brainer. Good business really is more profitable. I wanted this book to show me how good business is worth the effort by eliminating the downsides - getting hammered by the politically correct for not going far enough, by the banks and shareholders for not maximising profits, by management for thinking too much about the long term and not next quarters results. But as the downsides were smilingly brushed aside I decided regretfully that this was preaching to the converted - cosy but not convincing. Pity.