Quick reviews: Tuned In, Saatchi & Saatchi, Date Night

The easy one first: Date Night: it was fun. I expected it to be hilarious in both a slapstick and smart kinda way, and it was. I wasn't expecting it to try to layer on too much emotional/romantic stuff and it did, but that was pretty good too. :)

I got about a third of the way through Saatchi & Saatchi: the Inside Story before I stopped. The book's fine, but focuses more on the personalities and politics, rather than the breakthrough advertising and after a while that got less interesting.

I did get through "Tuned In", which I picked up from the library at work. Its a good book and at first glance I thought I wouldn't learn anything that I hadn't in an introductory marketing class, but the book's a great reminder on how easy it is not get the basic things wrong and how often even folks that should know better, don't; or even if they know better aren't able to act in a way consistent with that.

The book goes over ways to understand your customer, create buyer personas, thinking about creating a product that people are willing to pay for, being outstanding and authentic with customer service etc. and all of it is pretty solid, but what resonated with me are some of the examples of why this doesn't happen: i.e. how easy it is to make product decisions based on people chatting in a room or how PR concerns can strip the authenticity out of your messaging, and why its so important to fight it.

You may not learn that much if you've covered this material before, some of the examples of "tuned in" companies are a stretch, and its not a great intro to marketing... but its a decent read as a reminder for what you should be thinking about.