OBD: Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion | 
 enlarge | Author: Lucas Conley
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
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Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 3131
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.9
ISBN: 1586484680
Dewey Decimal Number: 650
EAN: 9781586484682
ASIN: 1586484680
Publication Date: June 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The world is more branded than ever before: Americans encounter anywhere between 3,000 and 5,000 ads a day. Increasingly, brands vie for our attention from insidious angles that target our emotional responses (scent, taste, sound, and touch). In an ever-faster, more competitive global landscape fueled both by the rise of cheaper, foreign brands and by so-called house-brands (the eponymous brands of Wal-Mart, Target, and the like), American companies are in a mad dash to keep up. Branding, or identity-making, has begun to replace the research and development of yore. From the fertile crescent of branding (Cincinnati), to the laboratories of sensory specialists (musicologists and "noses"), Lucas Conley takes us on a long-overdue journey through the strange culture that is our own. As hilarious as it is frightening, Conley's investigation into the phenomenon of rampant commercialism (often backed by little substance), offers an illuminating portrait of an age of obsession.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Reals Problem, Wrong Approach August 21, 2008
Some of the tendencies the author addresses in the advertising industry are indeed disturbing. However, presented with this wealth of information, he reaches the wrong conclusion.
He blames the corporations for creating these brands and boosting sales through cheap gimmicks completely unrelated to product quality. However, the corporations would not observe such practices if they were not the most effective known strategies. Clearly, in the West, people buy image as much as they do a product.
So the correct conclusion is not that corporations are superficial, but rather that most consumers make purchases according to superficial criteria.
People need to ask change of themselves, not of the corporations who will use whatever means are most successful to sell their product. Marketing and advertising is but a mirror into which the collective consumer may look. The author of this book does not like what is to be seen there and concludes that the problem is to be remedied by breaking the mirror.
Finally, I would question whether ubiquitous branding is a disorder. For instance, if I had to choose between having an X Inc. stadium and no stadium at all, I'd rather paste on the logo. What if a poor working mother is able to send her child to college by intelligently investing the money she gets from naming him/her after a company? The kid can change their name when they're 18.
 Said Before August 8, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
A quick read - and yet it has been said before. As disturbing as the subject matter maybe for marketeers, the author appears to have an ax to grind?
 Why DID you buy that? July 5, 2008
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
I had to chuckle at the title of this book "Obsessive Branding Disorder." This sounds like the latest mental disease to make the rounds of television talk shows, but the author is pointing up a marketing "disease" in business. In the absence of an original idea of worth, in a world awash with me-too products, marketing tries desperately to grab a few milliseconds of our attention to influence our buying decisions. Does it work?
In the case of youths, certainly it does. For someone my age (who had to sew her own wardrobe for school), the idea that the "wrong" shoes, jacket, jeans would lead to social ostracism in high school (as opposed to honestly getting there by being a nerd) is something nightmarish to me. But marketeers springboard off that desperate herding instinct of kids not to be different (so as not to be singled out) and to belong by engineering marketing efforts using blogging, Youtube and word of mouth. Since word of mouth is one of the cheapest and most powerful means of generating sales, marketing efforts have been concentrating on harnessing the power of multitudes of advocates. Even though word of mouth is difficult to control marketeers have been trying to seed the population and generate buzz by free samples, small payments and other inducements. That's just one type of branding strategy.
The author gives example after example of how brand placement, a new strategy in marketing, is used by companies in place of innovation and the risky business of introducing a new product. He also discusses the extremes of brand loyalty (theft and mugging over popular brands of clothing) to branding campaigns for entire cities, to promote tourism. He discusses product placement "creep", where product logos appear on stadiums, in films and other unexpected places, in order to seep into the unconscious and sway your opinion.
There is no doubt that marketing "noise" (the din of similar products competing for attention in this media-saturated world) is a huge problem for marketing. Any surface upon which your eye dwells for more than a second is a place to put an ad (example, the tray table in airplane seats and the handle of a gas pump.) The author exhorts us to avoid being herded into brand loyalties that offer no real benefit or differential by being aware of marketing ploys, by avoiding "loyalty beyond reason" and by fighting what is in many cases, an illusion. This is a short but excellent book to make you aware of tricks being played on you to extract your money from your pocket unwittingly for diminishing value, for paying a premium for absolutely nothing, not a promise of superior quality or performance or any benefit beyond what a similar product could provide to you. Excellent, fascinating reading. I really recommend you read this.
Conley's little book on the use and abuse of branding to sell products and services. July 4, 2008
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
This was a great book. It was short (only 200 pages), but the type was small and the margins were reasonable. It's an investigative piece. The author is not a marketing expert or a writer trying to promote a marketing firm or whatever. This is a simple book that explores the status of marketing today. It questions whether the US culture has become obsessed with brands rather than quality products and new improved products.
The author says at some point that he was thoroughly amused by the extreme examples of branding he saw. And he believes the world is cheapened when EVERYONE sees it with a marketer's eye. I agree. But this book is good because it points out that branding is used AND ABUSED as a tool to sell goods and services today. A lot more use and a lot less abuse would be good!
This book informs us that successful marketers today create loyal customers who are lazy minded and don't think much before they buy. They just stick to the brand that they have learned to trust and believe in. Once a company creates a successful brand, then they milk it for all it's worth.
This book has an introduction and 9 chapters. Examine the Search Inside material provided by Amazon to see the chapter titles. I thought the book was written well and well outlined. 5 stars!
It's a Brand World July 3, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
And Lucas Conley is none too happy about it as he warns us in OBD. Less R and D is being spent on improving a product. Why spend the do-re-mi when you can just change the shape,say, of the bottle it comes in, making it cooler but not better.Exploit emotion. The brain thinks 3,000 times faster with an emotional charge than a logical one. Go to an Apple store and you'll see his point. Or quoting Daniel Gilbert, "Experiences don't hang around long enough to disappoint you. What you have left(after a visit) are wonderful memories."(Or look at the testing done showing that people love Pepsi, in a blind taste test but when it is mano a mano(can to can), the visual of the Coke can actually lights up a part of our brains.) But the book really excels when he talks about what sounds like a vast conspiracy. Smells emanating from the shelves of grocery stores? Yes, put there to get you worked up. And smells for kids on put on the shelf consistent with a child's height. And P and G has organizations that give free samples to regular, next door folks in exchange for them hitting you up on the value of pampers or the sparkle to be found only in a certain toothpaste.Like a sci-fi movie. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must drive home in the Ultimate Driving Machine, fire up the Viking Range, get out the Gordon Ramsey cookbook, and get ready for the Fourth.
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