The Hindu Business Line : Branding doesn’t work anymore bookmark

We can keep talking about brands and how they work till the cows come home, but this one line from Jonathan Salem Baskin can hit you like a tonne of bull waste: ‘Branding doesn’t work anymore.’ In all likelihood we may have to be si tting back and watching consumers produce ads and then sell to themselves, he foresees.

Maybe it isn’t enough to deliberate on how to brand, but rather if it’s reasonable to expect to brand at all, wonders Baskin in Branding Only Works On Cattle ( www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com). “Further, if there’s a different way to conceive of brands, are there better, different ways to deliver them?”

The author frets that most branding amounts to getting consumers’ attention, and usually involves something funny, obnoxious, weird, stupid, overtly or implicitly sexual, or insanely abstract.

Compelling presentation.

Survival tips for frontline staff

Dealing with Difficult People
Roberta Cava

How to deal with nasty customers, demanding bosses and annoying co-workers? Here’s help from Roberta Cava’s Dealing with Difficult People ( www.jaicobooks.com).

“Companies usually forbid their employees to retaliate when faced with client’s negative behaviour. The result is often frustrated, stressed-out employees,” she writes, in a chapter on dealing with difficult clients.

Cava advises frontline employees to remind themselves that angry clients probably have an unmet need. “Use empathy – put yourself in their shoes. Say such things as, ‘I don’t blame you for being upset. I’d feel that way too if that had happened to me.’ Listen carefully, maintaining eye contact, nodding your head, etc.”

What should you do when a client is condescending or rude, treating you like dirt? Turn off your defence mechanism, the author counsels. “Realise that you are in control of the situation.”

She also suggests that you ask them the show-stopping question, ‘What do you want me to do to solve this problem?’ This often stops them long enough to clarify what they really want from you, Cava adds.

Recommended read.

Deliriously hilarious

The Madness Starts at 9: Life and Times in an Ad agency
Vinay Kanchan

The ‘pitch’ is a process, during which an ad agency approaches a client with the intention of acquiring his business, usually marked by ‘environmentally friendly activities’ such as recycling research, strategy, and creative,defines Vinay Kanchan in The Madness Starts at 9: Life and Times in an Ad Agency ( www.cinnamonteal.in).

“A pitch is a very secretive thing… At times we don’t even tell the creative what brand the work is being done for,” he says through a character in the deliriously hilarious book. One of the most important decisions is about the number of slides needed for the pitch presentation. “127,” says Vikas. “Because 127 totals 10, which means 1, and that’s a winning number… it’s all scientific. In fact, we have never lost a pitch when the slide count is 127.”

Unputdownable.

D. Murali

BookPeek.blogspot.com

Do send in your queries, suggestions and feedback to brandline@thehindu.co.in.