A punchy and stimulating look at building brands.
A business book offers a methodology for companies to build trust in their potential customers.
“People don’t trust brands like they used to,” Bloomstein notes at the beginning of her work. “Failures of leadership, inconsistent messaging, and deceptive practices” in all areas of public life, from retail to “the halls of governments,” have combined to erode trust in marketed brands of all kinds. “Cynicism takes root,” the author writes, “when people don’t know who to trust and decide not to believe anything.” This is both a threat and a challenge for businesses wishing to build trust in their products and services, and Bloomstein seeks to provide clear and sharp advice for what customers want and what they respond to in the present age. “Users don’t shop for features, or fables,” she asserts. “They shop for benefits first,” for “What’s in it for me?” basics. “Focus on users’ needs,” she advises, “then you can help them focus on the features and details that will make a difference in their decisions.” In the course of her book, the author uses a variety of companies as examples of what to do and how to do it. Brand names like America’s Test Kitchen, GOV.UK, Airbnb, Banana Republic, MailChimp, and others are discussed, sometimes in the context of both Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the well-known business truism about “good, fast, or cheap”—everybody has to pick two out of the three. At the heart of Bloomstein’s outlook is the importance of simplicity in the flow of information. “Abstraction is different from generalizing,” she shrewdly points out, and “If information is power, it’s because confidence in our own knowledge fuels trust.” The author uses a very clear, lean prose line; marketing directors at all levels will find her insights intriguing, although her discussions of her various example companies can sometimes go too far into the weeds for effective generalizing. In this instance, readers may think of Bloomstein’s own comment that “ ‘More’ isn’t better. It’s exhausting.”
A punchy and stimulating look at building brands.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-989603-92-5
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Page Two Books
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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