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Usually ships in 1 business days | | Only 2 left in stock, order soon! | | | | | | The world is more branded than ever before: Americans encounter anywhere between 3,000 and 5,000 ads a day. Increasingly, brands vie for our attention from insidious angles that target our emotional responses (scent, taste, sound, and touch). In an ever-faster, more competitive global landscape fueled both by the rise of cheaper, foreign brands and by so-called house-brands (the eponymous brands of Wal-Mart, Target, and the like), American companies are in a mad dash to keep up. Branding, or identity-making, has begun to replace the research and development of yore. From the fertile crescent of branding (Cincinnati), to the laboratories of sensory specialists (musicologists and "noses"), Lucas Conley takes us on a long-overdue journey through the strange culture that is our own. As hilarious as it is frightening, Conley's investigation into the phenomenon of rampant commercialism (often backed by little substance), offers an illuminating portrait of an age of obsession.
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Lucas Conley | | Hardcover: | 240 pages | | Publisher: | PublicAffairs | | Publication Date: | June 03, 2008 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 1586484680 | | Product Length: | 8.54 inches | | Product Width: | 5.97 inches | | Product Height: | 0.89 inches | | Product Weight: | 0.82 pounds | | Package Length: | 8.5 inches | | Package Width: | 5.7 inches | | Package Height: | 0.9 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.9 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 15 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 15 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 found the following review helpful:
 Conley's little book on the use and abuse of branding to sell products and services. Jul 04, 2008
By Jeff Lippincott
"JLIPPIN"
This was a great book. It was short (only 200 pages), but the type was small and the margins were reasonable. It's an investigative piece. The author is not a marketing expert or a writer trying to promote a marketing firm or whatever. This is a simple book that explores the status of marketing today. It questions whether the US culture has become obsessed with brands rather than quality products and new improved products.
The author says at some point that he was thoroughly amused by the extreme examples of branding he saw. And he believes the world is cheapened when EVERYONE sees it with a marketer's eye. I agree. But this book is good because it points out that branding is used AND ABUSED as a tool to sell goods and services today. A lot more use and a lot less abuse would be good!
This book informs us that successful marketers today create loyal customers who are lazy minded and don't think much before they buy. They just stick to the brand that they have learned to trust and believe in. Once a company creates a successful brand, then they milk it for all it's worth.
This book has an introduction and 9 chapters. Examine the Search Inside material provided by Amazon to see the chapter titles. I thought the book was written well and well outlined. 5 stars!
15 of 17 found the following review helpful:
a very talented Author doing his thing Jun 18, 2008
By R. Law
"textbookneed"
Conley has done well in providing overdue business and cultural criticism for our quick fix, near-sighted economy. He cleverly points out that, over the last decade, business has become obsessed with branding their products with imagery, lifestyles, and experiences in an effort to fool consumers into loyalty and irrational buying habits. This obsession has sacrificed a company's attention to innovation and for a product's quality improvement.
To sell your product, it isn't about making something useful or effective anymore. Companies are convinced that the storylines, ideology, and the lifestyle they invent for their product will do the selling. If these methods become ineffective, the company ignores the need to improve the product or create something more advanced as it's far easier to just "rebrand" the lifestyle and the experiences that the product is supposed to bring you. All this is done in an attempt to overwhelm emotion and discourage reason.
Conley has framed a vibrant discourse for the zero-sum game playing out between branding and innovation, emotion versus reason, and the quick fix versus long-term solutions. He thoroughly outlines the branding disorder by providing plenty of convincing examples from the business world of Proctor Gamble to the cityscapes of New Orleans and Cincinnati. A persuasive criticism develops as we find out that it's not just business that loses but the consumer and the public at large as well.
The book encourages further thought and discussion as it branches into complicated issues including the nature of buying and selling, globalization, and our "just saying it makes it true" culture. A must read for the business tycoon or just the economic well-wisher, reading the book produces an immediate 'brand' new awareness of the ads and economy around us.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
entertaining commentary on what we have become Jul 01, 2008
By MJreads
As someone who travels often, I require reading material that distracts m from the boredom of the airport drone. This book is poignant, funny and revealing. It held my attention throughout. The author, Lucas Conley has done an excellent job of pointing out how we have deviated from a society of quality seeking individuals to a mass of the product obsessed. It is all around us, on the subways of New York City where everyone is plugged into the latest i-gadget, to the streets of Bangkok where booths are jammed with fake goods. All this is clearly a reflection of our obsession with the appearance and perceived coolness of the brand rather than the caliber of the product itself.
Conley does an excellent job of calling our attention to the error of our ways, and does so in a humourous and captivating manner. I would highly recommend his book to anyone.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
It's a Brand World Jul 03, 2008
By Michael P. Maslanka
And Lucas Conley is none too happy about it as he warns us in OBD. Less R and D is being spent on improving a product. Why spend the do-re-mi when you can just change the shape,say, of the bottle it comes in, making it cooler but not better.Exploit emotion. The brain thinks 3,000 times faster with an emotional charge than a logical one. Go to an Apple store and you'll see his point. Or quoting Daniel Gilbert, "Experiences don't hang around long enough to disappoint you. What you have left(after a visit) are wonderful memories."(Or look at the testing done showing that people love Pepsi, in a blind taste test but when it is mano a mano(can to can), the visual of the Coke can actually lights up a part of our brains.) But the book really excels when he talks about what sounds like a vast conspiracy. Smells emanating from the shelves of grocery stores? Yes, put there to get you worked up. And smells for kids on put on the shelf consistent with a child's height. And P and G has organizations that give free samples to regular, next door folks in exchange for them hitting you up on the value of pampers or the sparkle to be found only in a certain toothpaste.Like a sci-fi movie. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must drive home in the Ultimate Driving Machine, fire up the Viking Range, get out the Gordon Ramsey cookbook, and get ready for the Fourth.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Good read Sep 10, 2008
By st starseed
"st starseed"
Perhaps the breeziest business book in years, Obsessive Branding Disorder hooked me in with its gloriously funny potshots at branding executives and the branding industry.
Examples: The state of Kentucky shelled out some $20 million for the words "Unbridled Spirit" and an ad campaign to accompany it, while Connecticut's tourism board assigned colors to each region of the state, because: "The psychology of color was used to further define the brand by zeroing on geographic characteristics or more ethereal elements," said a state tourism director.
If only Lucas Conley could have continued his assault on the world of branding. Sadly, beginning with the story of the Charmin Bath Tissue truck (Page 67), his writing flattens into a catalog of advertising methods and gimmicks the industry continues to trot out...entire stores devoted to a brand, packaged scents, and neuroscience.
(The list is not astoundingly different from other sound-the-alarm tomes of the recent past. Product placement on game shows, celebrities in TV ads, and even radio jingles were considered demons of the day, and while I'd personally argue (and agree with the author) that all of this marketing is taking a toll on our psyches, he provides no evidence that the latest gimmicks are going to be any worse than their predecessors.)
Only in the end does Lucas get back to branding, and this time, he takes successful shots at personal branding before finishing with some fairly well-written philosophical perspectives on the practice.
See all 15 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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