A fascinating—and surprisingly fun—wide-angle look at advertising.
A comprehensive look at the nature and practice of branding.
Once upon a time, companies developed their brands solely for recognition purposes and distributed them through limited and well-worn channels, as Probst makes clear in the groundwork for his impressive new book. A farmer or a small-town shop owner might respond to a particular brand by buying a product, but the relationship usually went no further than that. But now, as Probst asserts, “We consume all these goods because marketing convinces us they make us happy, loved, and esteemed, but too many products make us feel happy one moment and miserable the next.” The author begins by noting what most consumers already understand: Brands “can foster meaningful relationships with their customers by being more empathetic and delivering a personalized experience.” But he quickly expands his discussion to include far more cultural and psychological elements. He contends that the advent of the internet has split most of us into three people—the real, digital, and virtual selves—which sometimes makes it difficult to remember who we really are. This conflux of identity and advertising is a note struck throughout the book, which repeatedly cites the ubiquity of a new mode of advertising. “People who want to express their ‘real me’ are more engaged with brands online and are motivated to co-create brand value,” he explains. “They become brand advocates.” All of this is in service to what Probst calls “contextual commerce,” the modern phenomenon of instant gratification that consumers expect—being able to “buy anything at any time without interrupting their lives.”
Readers of Probst’s Brand Hacks (2019) will remember his snappy prose style and quick pacing, but nothing in that earlier book will prepare them for the manic, thrilling sweep of this new book, which begins as a discussion of the ways branding must adapt to the demands of the present moment and steadily expands into nothing less than a penetrating portrait of an entire culture. Indeed, one of the most interesting and challenging main takeaways of the book is the extent to which branding has become the entire culture, for good or ill. “Consumers no longer expect brands to merely market their products,” he writes, “but to provide reliable and accurate information, take a stance on social issues, and make a positive contribution to society and the community.” In these pages, Probst takes the inner workings of consumer marketing and transforms them into an utterly fascinating snapshot of the way we live now. As Probst notes, the playing field has never been broader. “Small brands used to be hindered by few retailers carrying a limited number of brands along with their private labels. E-commerce has solved this by giving anyone access to an audience,” he writes. “Amazon shelf space is unlimited.” The author touches on everything from recycling and “green” initiatives to amateur-dominated social media platforms like YouTube or Instagram to the “woke” movement, and he illustrates his points by referencing TikTok trends and celebrity endorsements. Probst’s combination of agile writing and insightful observations makes most other books on modern branding look both overly circumspect and woefully incomplete.
A fascinating—and surprisingly fun—wide-angle look at advertising.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-1646871254
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Ideapress Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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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