(book review) War In The BoardRoom

War in the Boardroom: Why Left-Brain Management and Right-Brain Marketing Don't See Eye-to-Eye -- and What to Do About It  by Al Ries and Laura Ries

(HarperCollins, NY-USA, 2009)

"You win by creating better brands" is the message I took away from this book. Al Ries talks about the differences between left-brained management and right-brained marketing and how rift between the two causes problems. Thats 'war in the boardroom'. The war is caused due to difference in the approaches of left and right brained thinkers - Management is logical whereas marketing is creative. Management or the numerical mind goes with a expansion approach to build a business, to create a product. But creative people look for a focused message - You need to contract in order to build a brand, you need to develop a perception. This difference in thinking causes a rift between the two. The book explains why money alone is not enough to build a brand. The authors finally provides a few hints on how to find a middle ground between the right brained managers and the left brained artists. It demonstrates how both kinds of people are important for a business to succeed.

The book gives some recent and interesting examples - I enjoyed reading through them and realting to each story. It talks about why brands like Harley Davidson, Starbucks, Heinz dominate the market while others fail. Strong brands do not focus on everyhing they can do, they focus on their strengths and dominate it. I liked the FedEx story about how the brand lost millions of dollars in its initial years until they found an area to focus on. Once they focused on their core strength (overnight deliveries), they just took off. The fun part is that they never closed any of their other services - but they became the best overnight delivery business and created a strong perception. That is what great brands do.

Overall, the book is a easy read. I would recommend the book to both sides - left brainers and the right brainers :)

(book review) Designing Brand Identity

Designing Brand Identity (3rd edition): An Essential Guide to the entire Branding Team by Alina Wheeler
John Wiley & Sons, NewJersey-USA, 2009


Designing Brand Identity is indeed an essential guide to the entire branding team – one of a kind book – theory blended with practical examples from the market. It is a step by step guide to the brand identity process. I believe it is a must have guide!

The book takes us through the basics of brand identity to processes like research, design, strategy to the best practices in the business – locally and globally through some live examples. The book has beautiful quotes from an array of experts in the design, strategy and branding field. 


I am a designer interested in learning and working on branding projects. This book gave a detailed picture of the entire process of brand identity. I found the book a easy read - has short, bite-sized paragraphs, underscored with visual examples. It is more like a  textbook – organized chapter by chapter – you can read sequentially or read any particular concept you want.


It is a must read for designers interested in the branding arena, makrketing people or just anyone interested in knowing what goes behing the scenes while creating a brand.

(book review) Wired to Care

Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper when they create widespreadempathy by Dev Patnaik with Peter Mortensen

FT Press, NewJersey-USA, 2009

This “business” book is about what all of us already posses and use in our daily lives but are trained to leave it back as we enter the workplace – Its about empathy and caring about people. It takes various examples from Dev Patnaik's experience at Jump Associates – a hybrid strategy firm. The book kicks-off with a basic idea that companies should care about their customers and revolves around the idea that a business will succeed as much with their hearts as much as their heads.

The book arguably demonstrates that more a business appreciates what their consumers or employees want or empathizes with their needs, more are the chances that the business will succeed. The book makes even more sense if you have read – 'A Whole New Mind' by Daniel Pink. Its like a flow from one book to another like a sequel movie to a previous one.

What makes the book most interesting is the way Patnaik goes through real life examples about a number of companies such as Nike, Disney, Mercedes, Clorox, etc. and about empathy and the ways companies could integrate empathy into their daily businesses and narrates them like stories – Stories that you can't resist, stories that hang on to you even after you have finished the book. Dev Patnaik really connects to the readers.

I particularly like the example of Harley Davidson Motors where Patnaik shows that the simplest way to have empathy for your customers is to be like them. The easiest way to gain empathy is to hire your own customers as employees. Harley's employees are themselves riders and the company has their front parking lot reserved only for motorcycles. The parking for automobiles or “cages” as they say, is at the back. And this is just the beginning! I won't go into any more details of the story as it will take all the fun out from reading it yourself. Other stories for X-Box and Zune, Nike, Pattie Moore – the story of the designer are as much enthralling.

As Dev writes - “...if you want people to be interested in you, you should be genuinely interested in them. That's a pretty straight-forward lesson with relatively major implications.” The same thing applies to the relationship between businesses and consumers. 

Its a must read for all business leaders, CEOs, CFOs (all the people with a 'C' in their titles) and people in the design field. 

Their website is worth a look.

This book is all set to become a classic! 

(book review) The Brand Gap

The Brand Gap: How to bridge the distance between Business Strategy & Design by Marty Neumeier
New Riders, NY-USA, 2003


Anyone – be it in the business world, marketing, design, branding or elsewhere realize the power of the word - 'Brand'. Everyone talks about things like branded products, brand identity or brand experience and that a brand defines one's personality or marks one's likes and dislikes. But does everyone really understand what a 'brand' really means? Marty Neumier answers it all for us.

The author gives a new and a practical definition to 'building a brand' while explaining the 5 disciplines of brand building viz. :
1.Differentiate
2.Collaborate
3.Innovate
4.Validate
5.Cultivate

The book runs around all sorts of processes that go in creating, maintaining and growing a brand – the successful and the not-so-successful ones. The book starts from the very basic question: 'What is a brand?' and treads through branding, trends, the tests, problems,  strategy, creativity, names, avatars, designing, packaging, marketing, globalism and evolution of 'brand' to very comprehensive 'take-home' lessons. And these are just a few topics the book talks about.

As they say - “Good things come in small packages”, the best thing about this book is that Marty covers it all in a tiny little book that one can finish reading in a couple of hours. Its like taking a 'one quick pill' for all.

I would recommend this book to anyone with a background in design, business, branding, consumer study, engineering, psychology and anyone who likes to know the story behind brands.

You can view a presentation on the book by the author –  The Brand Gap
Its a huge presentation but worth a watch!