Posts filed under 'books'
All together now
Jo Phillips writes:
When she spoke at the Booksellers Association conference last week Michelle Harrison, one of our Directors, implored the industry to think harder about how to sell books to consumers who are showing signs that they prize collective experience far more than they used to. This extends beyond valuing such experiences over material things (e.g. a book) to valuing the shared experience above the individual experience (e.g. reading a book in the bath). Whereas five years ago people were telling us what they wanted most was a bit of ‘me-time’, now it seems above all what we value is quality ‘we-time’.
As we move into the summer season in the UK this desire to get together is evident in the huge growth in festivals of all kinds and scales - last year there were over 550 of them and nearly two thirds of adults have attended a live music event in the last three years. Booksellers are in on this act - the Hay Festival, which starts today, grows larger every year (new for this year is a link up with a prison broadening its base further). Book clubs are also growing in popularity. But these are still niche audiences among book-buyers.
The need for social innovation is a challenge to many industries that have focused on benefits for individuals. It may call for turning the category on its head, as Nintendo Wii did by sidestepping the industry competition for faster, bigger, better graphics to focus on enabling living room fun between friends, or through product innovation, as Walkers Sensations did by creating the sharing crisps opportunity.
Add comment 22 May 2008
What to read in 2008?
Andrew Curry writes:
The most recent issue of The Wire, WPP’s in-house paper, has a feature on ‘What to read in 2008′, a collection of recommendations from individuals working for businesses across the world. I blogged a while ago on my contribution - about Thomas Homer-Dixon’s The Upside of Down. If there are themes from the other contributions, they are about the emerging economies, especially China, and about marketing and management.
WPP Chief Exec Sir Martin Sorrell’s choice is the two working papers (99 and 119, opens in pdf) from Goldman Sachs which, in his words, “describe the shift in wealth from west to east”. (The more recent Working Paper 134 , also pdf, is an update). The other two Chinese selections - from people working in Asian markets - look at China “as a country, not just as a market”. The Search for Modern China locates China within its cultural and political history, while China: The Fragile Superpower is subtitled, “How China’s internal politics could derail its peaceful rise”.
On management, the idiosyncratic Rory Sutherland (of Ogilvy) praises Discover Your Inner Economist, while bemoaning the fact that “It is a disgrace to marketing and research disciplines that economists are now writing more interesting books than we are”. David Muir, at WPP’s Channel Practice, commends as a management primer Team of Rivals - a history of how President Lincoln managed a cabinet whose members disliked each other and coveted his job.
And as always in such lists, there are some quirkier recommendations. The arguments in David Maister’s Strategy and the Fat Smoker, about strategy and change, are both “irrefutable and wonderfully personal”, while Very Thai is a cultural journey into modern Thailand - pictures and text - which offers “new ways of exploring your own, or a new culture”.
Add comment 7 March 2008
Influential Boomers
Siân Davies writes:
Henley Centre HeadlightVision is just embarking on a merger with the US research company Yankelovich - the market leaders in understanding the changing values and behaviours of US consumers.
While we’ve been negotiating I’ve had the good fortune to immerse myself in much of their research. One publication which stood out for me was ‘Generation Ageless‘, by J Walker Smith and Ann Clurman, Yankelovich’s leading commentators on generational marketing. Yankelovich coined the term ‘baby boomers’ in the 1960s when they first started collecting data on this influential generation. As Walker and Ann say: “Without notice or warning, in defiance of all trends and expectations, Baby Boomers exploded onto the American scene, and in the process changed everything”.
Add comment 1 February 2008
The Upside of Down
Andrew Curry writes:
I was asked to write a paragraph on a book which had influenced my thinking in 2007 for a forthcoming issue of the WPP newspaper The Wire. My choice: Thomas Homer-Dixon’s book The Upside of Down:
The Upside of Down changed the way I look at the world. It is about what holds together the complex systems which make our societies work. The answer, in short, is energy - and in particular, energy which doesn’t take very much energy to produce. Sun works well in warm countries; oil is perfect. As societies get more complex, they have to create and shift ever more energy, which makes them even more complex. When the easy energy starts to run out, collapse follows. Homer-Dixon brings his argument to life with stories about the Roman Empire and Californian fires. So where’s the upside? Only this: it may not be too late to make our shift to a world of scarcer energy less disastrous than it was for the Romans.
I’ll blog some more when The Wire is published on the other entries.
Add comment 24 November 2007
Outing Dumbledore
Andrew Curry writes:
There’s a whole story here about fan culture and celebrities, and also what happens when authors don’t have to worry about what happens next. No sooner had J.K.Rowling mentioned at a reading in New York that Dumbledore was gay than the Dumbledore Pride site is selling the T-shirts - 7,000 before you can even get your wand out.
As Jason Kottke pointed out in his blog - the fan fiction floodgates are surely about to open. If Dumbledore, then who else?
Add comment 26 October 2007
