An involving and thought-provoking series of challenges to the old-fashioned idea of brand building.
A comprehensive guide to elevating your branding game.
Truly effective branding is not merely taking a costume out of a closet and wearing it when needed, marketing expert Chidley contends; rather, it should be imagined as a field, “a space people can step into and feel changed by…that helps them see themselves more clearly, act more confidently, or belong more deeply.” This field is a force surrounding the planet—the “brand gravity” at the heart of his book. The author writes that he’s spent years watching brands become “untethered,” reduced to a mere logo, color palette, or slogan, when, in his view, there’s so much more to the concept. He urges readers to enter what he refers to as the Gravity Era, in which the traditional idea of branding is reframed: Instead of adorning a product with the bells and whistles of a branding campaign, “gravitational” brands establish their presence first, becoming visible, repeatable, and shared in order to win hearts. Too many brands, Chidley writes, invest in being seen before deciding what they should be seen for, failing to build a strong anchor. A well-designed product, he maintains, doesn’t need explanation; through his “gravitational” approach, they appeal directly to intuition. The author’s long experience shows on every page of his book, which is full of challenging reconceptions of the nature and psychology of branding. He clearly and accessibly breaks down what he refers to as the Brand Gravity Matrix, which is the intersection of the nature of the customer’s choice (does the customer make the choice, or does the brand take the lead?) and the nature of the product or service being chosen (is it functional or emotional?). Despite his contention to the contrary, some of his statements do seem to prioritize the manipulation of the brand over the quality of the product, but for the most part, this is a fascinating study of the kind of branding that’s never been more ubiquitous than it is right now.
An involving and thought-provoking series of challenges to the old-fashioned idea of brand building.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2025
ISBN: 9798993695013
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2026
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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