by Stan Bernard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 19, 2021
A thoughtful and enthusiastic high-concept assessment of how top companies succeed.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
A look at how examples from politics can transform brand marketing.
In this debut business book, Bernard argues that the most successful companies, haven’t found success through traditional branding practices, but by treating their businesses like political campaigns. Companies such as Amazon, Tesla, and Uber—the “Transcenders” of the book’s subtitle—set own their agendas, according to this book’s framing, instead of responding only to competitors’ actions. They distill their core messages into concise, memorable slogans that help to turn customers into true believers. Bernard opens by analyzing several political campaigns, including those of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, to highlight elements of his framework, such as those mentioned above; in subsequent chapters, he uses these concepts to analyze the actions of booming companies. For example, he looks at how Starbucks presents itself as a “third place” that isn’t one’s home or work, and how skincare company Glossier went from covering makeup trends to setting them. The final chapter offers a few recommendations for readers looking to apply similar models to their own businesses. Bernard’s prose style, with its distracting abundance of capitalized terms (“As a Transcender leader, [Apple co-founder Steve] Jobs recognized that he needed two things: a winning Campaign Agenda and winning product candidates”) that may not appeal to all readers. However, like the companies he profiles, he knows how to make a convincing case, and he does a good job of presenting and supporting his arguments. The book is at its strongest when it highlights key elements of successful campaigns, as when Bernard recommends replacing the classic “elevator pitch” with something briefer that one can present when elevator doors are closing: “if you can only communicate four words to your customer on an elevator, it should be the Campaign Agenda, since it is far more important to Communicate the Agendathan it is to promote the brand.” The chapter offering tips to readers on applying the framework to their own businesses, however, is mostly quite general, focusing more on concepts than actionable steps.
A thoughtful and enthusiastic high-concept assessment of how top companies succeed.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5445-2232-6
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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
Share your opinion of this book
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
by Matthew Desmond ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 21, 2023
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
11
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
Share your opinion of this book
More by Matthew Desmond
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.