2/5 stars
Brand thinking? Groupthinking more like…
As this is a book of fairly straightforward, slightly gushing interviews with various people from the world of marketing, this would today have worked much better as a podcast. In this format it feels pretty repetitive as well as being dated (first published in 2011, with some of the focus on social media as if it’s new and Apple as if it’s a challenger brand feeling really rather quaint.
There probably were some actively thought-provoking points made somewhere in here, but everyone blurred into one in the end. so I have no idea who said what, and nothing really stood out – except the guy who was very vocal about his dislike of Daniel Kahneman and the idea of Behavioural Economics.
Of course, these “insights” may have seemed more radical 15 years ago. And for newcomers to marketing they still might.
But it’s notable how much of what’s said here sounds fine in theory but feels very hard to turn into tangible takeaways that people trying to build brands themselves could actually use. It mostly all ends up sounding like fluff and cod psychology. You can see how marketing and branding ended up getting a bit of a bad name if this is the best they had to offer.
Then again, maybe it’s because pretty much everyone featured here is American? As Mark Ritson – today’s leading marketing advocate – keeps saying, American marketing and advertising hasn’t been particularly sophisticated for decades.
In short, useful to read if in the profession, but there’s very little surprising, practical or inspiring here. It’s mostly pretty obvious platitudes.