The Anti-Beach Reading Issue

Baldwin Louie — Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:00:00 -0700

Back in the days of dot-com IPOs, inane business titles were everywhere - you couldn't walk into a bookstore or a co-worker's office without seeing something on what Stendahl can teach you about turnkey solutions.

Times have changed, of course, but because a year or more can pass between a book being signed and being published, a few houses are still coughing up leftover books from early 2000 about dot-combat and Net attitude.

Thankfully, most publishers have moved to other subjects, but that doesn't mean their newer titles are any less depressing. Post-mortems are for the coroner's office, we say. But we found a number of new or soon-to-be released marketing-related titles ranging from philosophical books about the American attention span to the debunking of accepted marketing notions like focus groups. Before you go out and buy any of them, you may want to wait to see how they do in bookstores. If they don't fly off shelves, maybe you should pass. After all, why take marketing advice from writers who can't sell their own ideas?

With that in mind, and with a pretty good idea that you won't want to read books like these on the beach, here's a look at five notable marketing/business titles on the publishing horizon.

Gonzo Marketing by Christopher Locke

The Cluetrain Manifesto, which looked at such phenomena as company bulletin boards, was a bigger hit on the Web than it was as a book, but even the latter convinced more than a few people of the new role of "conversations" in marketing. Now its co-author, Locke, looks to run with the popularity the book brought him. His latest book, due for release in the fall, focuses on and then eschews "time-tested" techniques like permission marketing and market research; he even writes that he hopes the latter dies "because all it does is predict that we'll want the same things tomorrow that we wanted yesterday." Locke is not the P.J. O'Rourke his publisher says he is (they claim an "intense wit" and describe his book as "whacked-out") but his observations do pass the "so true I wonder why I didn't think of it myself" acid test, which is refreshing given the sad state of so many marketing titles these days.

The Attention Economy by Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck

Harvard Business School Press, the publisher that gave the world Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma - the esoteric, chart-ridden behemoth that seemed more at home in a microeconomics grad-school class than on the bestseller list - has a new egg-headed business title that makes a case that the greatest commodity is not ideas or information but mind share. As a high concept, it seems as dry and obvious as overcooked meat loaf, but the proof is there: Details like the fact that one Sunday edition of the New York Times contains more information than did all the written material of the 15th century, and terms like "organizational ADD" make it worthwhile.

Brand Warfare by David D'Alessandro

There's not a lot new here, but the author's authority (as the CEO of John Hancock Insurance) and somewhat funny take on a subject near and dear - the book says "co-dependency can be beautiful" in describing why brands need consumers and consumers need brands - have propelled it to the bestseller lists. It's mostly a rundown of anecdotes from the branding front lines, so it's unlikely to rock your boardroom. But if nothing else, you'll be able to use D'Alessandro's name at the water cooler, which kind of proves his point.

The Internet Bubble by Anthony B. Perkins and Michael C. Perkins

When the book first came out in 1999, it predicted a popping bubble, not infinite bliss like all the other books about the Internet. This summer brings an updated version, with a new epilogue and a stuttering attempt to define "The Next Big Thing." Among the author's nominations: Tim Berners-Lee's Net-interface project "The Semantic Web," which "will automatically process instructions on the Internet that currently require human intervention." The book also revels in its June 1999 claim that Internet companies were overvalued. OK, so maybe gloating isn't what the world needs right now, but what's the point in swimming upstream if you can't brag to other fish about it?

Underworld by Don DeLillo

We admit it. We're just throwing in this book because we like it. The fictionalized opening scene at Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard 'Round the World, with Jackie Gleason and J. Edgar Hoover in the crowd. Prose as rich as John Chambers. The high-resolution details about life in suburbia and the wide-lens sweep on the arms race.

Come to think of it, the fact that this book hit the bestseller lists may illustrate the best marketing principle of all: Nothing sells like a good idea.

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The Anti-Beach Reading Issue