Convincing, insightful, and possibly revolutionary marketing advice.
A business book makes a case for values-based marketing.
Marketers have long relied on demographics, such as age, gender, and marital status, to define specific audiences. Applying psychographics that include attitudes and aspirations helps refine audience segments. But according to researcher and international speaker Allison, how people actually behave comes from understanding human values—something he has built a research company around, using more than 750,000 global surveys to develop a “Valuegraphics Database” of 56 values that funnel into 15 “Valuegraphics archetypes.” This is more than merely marketing mumbo jumbo; Allison offers a solid, compelling argument for why his approach is sensibly relevant. Not surprisingly, the first part of the book is designed to wean marketers off their devotion to demographics. Characterizing demographics as “the Dewey Decimal System of humanity,” Allison notes they are useful for classification, but “there’s no link between what people are and what they’ll do next.” With that as the basis for fundamental change, in Part 2 of the volume the author uses examples and cites scientific research to show how and why values hold the key to human behavior. Allison explains the rationale behind the Valuegraphics Database and identifies the 56 human values he says can be applied globally. Part 3 is particularly intriguing; here, Allison takes readers on an informative tour, demonstrating how Valuegraphics are similar and different across the world’s various regions. Part 4, characterized by the author as a “DIY Valuegraphics Toolkit,” provides a detailed, four-step process that includes the raw materials a marketer needs to construct a “Valuegraphics Profile.” Part 5 eloquently defines and describes the 15 “data-driven archetypes,” such as “The Seekers,” “The Creatives,” and “The Savers,” that Allison believes represent broad categories encompassing the values identified for specific audiences. Finally, Part 6 is a valuable compendium of “case stories” illustrating how the Valuegraphics methodology can be applied in various real-world situations. The author writes with clarity, passion, and unbridled enthusiasm for “the power and potential of a values-driven view of humanity.” He generously shares information about Valuegraphics with the fervent hope that marketers will embrace his thinking.
Convincing, insightful, and possibly revolutionary marketing advice.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2022
ISBN: 9781544534619
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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