Wizard!: Harry Potter's Brand Magic - A Review

A fun analysis of that marketing behemoth Harry Potter.

Stephen Brown is fast becoming one of my favorite marketing writers. He has a humorous and engaging writing style. Loved it when he tried to use the Crucio curse on Seth Godin. Funny haha.

And yes, liked the gimmick of using a mirror to read one of the chapters. Interesting, but a pain and yet it was a marketing message in itself. If you liked something so much, you'd do almost anything for it. For marketers, that is the ultimate response to get out of their customers.

Agents & Dealers - A Review

I liked this book although it had less about marketing theory than Brown's previous release, The Marketing Code.

In this one, the fiction gets even more fantastical (which I think is why there was less marketing theory; the author may be too caught up in the writing of the fiction part to include the marketing bits).

But as per The Marketing Code, he reiterates again the idea that marketing is not a science but more of an alchemy. And that word alone, evokes magic and fantasy which unsurprisingly does not sit well with the many marketing gurus out there who have made their millions in consultancy gigs and hawking those almost unreadable tomes on marketing theory filled with scientific formulas and statistical data.

The Marketing Code - A Review

This is the first time I've added a review for a fiction book on this blog. But trust me, it's entirely appropriate. The Marketing Code is written by Stephen Brown, a Professor of Marketing Research at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. He calls this book a marketing thriller.

A marketing thriller? This book is like one of those marketing fads that he puts down in his book. An interesting idea but will it catch on?

Looks like it didn't judging from the very few reviews I found online. And it's shame. I liked this book. I absolutely dig that SA chapter where the Brady Bunch were cooking up fad marketing terms for sale. And the acronyms? Hilarious. It's a reflection of how ridiculous marketing is getting these days.

The Erotic History of Advertising - A Review

Sex sells. This book is proof that it does.

It was entertaining but not very useful in terms of any learnings. It was at times, a laborious read simply because a lot of the ads were described, not shown.

But then again, if all the ads were shown, the book would have made an interesting coffee table book which would not have made the author (a college professor) any more credible.

Brand Sense - Sensory Secrets Behind The Stuff We Buy - A Review

I bought this book because it was endorsed by Philip Kotler and The Wall Street Journal. And the fact that Martin Lindstrom is a renowned marketing guru. The WSJ hailed it to be “one of the five best marketing books ever published”.  Was curious about this and I did some Googling.

Turns out that it was one of 5 books that Steve Cone (senior marketing executive at Citigroup and the author of "Steal These Ideas: Marketing Secrets That Will Make You a Star" ) thought was the best. See the WSJ article here.

Ca$hvertising - A Review

This book is a gold mine! I made notes on almost every single page.

The best part I liked was on page 184 when he says,

"Advertising is not supposed to be entertainment! You may be entertained by it, but that's not its purpose. It's not a creativity contest. It's not meant to grace the walls of the Louvre in Paris. It's also not poetry, comedy, or a riddle to be figured out. Advertising is not about winning awards for being tricky, off-the-wall, or ingenious. Advertising - plain and simple - is about selling products and services. It's business communication with the goal to increase sales by interesting people enough in a product or service that they ultimately trade their money for it."

The Buzz on Google Buzz

It's gonna be nearly a month since the Google Buzz was launched. And honestly, I haven't been using it much other than to tell people that I'm somehow automatically following that it ain't something I'll be looking into.

Why am I not jumping on to this?

I didn't know this was coming
What I found really strange was that even though I am a long time user of the Google search engine and Gmail, I don't remember seeing any messages whether via email or Ad Sense ads or text links telling me that this was coming.

Hmmm...not quite, is it?

I was intrigued when some friends on Facebook had the following as their status updates a few days ago.

They all had the same message and of course, they were from the same agency.

Oh dear! More marketing terminology.

Read this research document on trends. Came across these terms ‘Live brand experience’ and ‘real time’ branding.

They're defined as follows :

"...'live' because the brand experience now needs to function like a show, event or multi-club experience so that its essence cannot be copied in any way."

" ‘Real time’ because consumers are now expecting brands to respond to their needs as soon as the ‘send’ or ‘post’ key has been thumbed."

What Would Google Do? - A Review

It's a very long ode to Google, methinks. Maybe too long? It seems like an expanded version of a blog post.

For me, I struggled to finish this. Yes, there are nuggets to be gleaned from it but it just wasn't gripping enough for me to get through this in one long sitting.

This book is for those who don't exactly understand why Google is big news and how it really works and why it's important in our lives. In other words, this book is actually for those who are not Net-savvy.