In "Mind Your X's and Y's", brand consultant and corporate trainer, Lisa Johnson reveals the key elements of success for breakaway brands. Johnson believes the Connected Generation (i.e. Gen X and Y or the 18-to-40-year-olds) is the most important group of consumers a business can have today because they not only have a lot of buying power, but they're also changing the way we find, sample, purchase and share products. The tech savvy and sophisticated Connected Generation are also immune to traditional advertising, so their attention and loyalty can only be won over by satisfying their cravings for things such as "Extreme personalization" for recognition, "Raise my pulse Adventure", "loose connections" in the form of social and professional networks, "brand candy", "Editors and filters", the "influence of peer-to-peer networks" and "a dramatic sense of theater" in everyday experiences (pg. 13 & 14). Moreover, Johnson's numerous case studies on brands like Tickle.com, Skype, Flickr, and Scion illustrate a direct relationship between their phenomenal success and having fulfilled at least one of the ten cravings, while some even use up to eight!
As an added bonus, the book's conclusion is actually an extra chapter about the five "New Players You Need to Know" in order to build compelling brands for the Connected Generation. Regardless of the industry you're in or the size of your organization, "new key players" every business should have on staff or at least strategic partnerships with include "Content strategists", "Community connectors" and "Change agents" to name a few (pg. 239-247). The case study on Facebook.com is also especially interesting as it explains how it (along with MySpace) was able to surpass Friendster in popularity (pg. 71). Yet, I found Johnson's incessant need to emphasize every point with exhaustive case studies to be a little redundant and patronizing at times (thus the reason for the imperfect rating). In fact, there were instances where I thought I was reading over the same page twice:(
You can actually visit The Reach Group's website and read a PDF summary on "The 10 Cravings" (www.reachgroupconsulting.com ), so I'm not sure why someone like Johnson who is always advocating how "Time is our most valuable currency" (pg. 234) would stretch a one page article into a 247 page book?
Bottom Line: The book offers amazing content, and I'd still buy Lisa Johnson's next revelation, but I'm hoping she'll limit her future works to a maximum of 200 pages (i.e. the average length for these kinds of business books). And the fact that bestselling author, Seth Godin and branding expert, Martin Lindstrom endorse this book (i.e. with positive reviews on the back cover) can be enough reasons to run out and purchase it today!
"Mind Your X's and Y's: Satisfying the 10 Cravings of a New Generation of Consumers" by Lisa Johnson - To learn more about this author, visit Kevin Lee's Website.
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