I came across a mention of your Lovemarks review via the Brandtarot blog. To keep a long comment short, I disagree with many of your critical comments of Lovemarks.

Your references to pg 144, 190, and 206 were quite misleading. Reading those quotes, one may have the impression that it is the writing style of the book. Far from it, all these references are from the chapter ending notes call "Five things to do tomorrow." and they are even printed as photos of Post-It notes. Well, messages on Post-It notes don't usually call for lengthy detailed analysis in my view.

Another critique you have on the book is that it doesn't quite give you a system to show you how to do it.
"If we want to win mystery, sensuality and intimacy for the brand, it's going to take a system, dry, thoughtful, grounded, nuanced, and powerful.  It's going to have to be something that the people at McKinsey (or any HBS grad) can look at without sneering."

Well, as Kevin Roberts said in an online radio interview (a link to it is available in my blog, simply search for — Kevin Roberts radio), well he wants people to hire Saatchi & Saatchi to do the job. This is a great, entertaining, and insightful book. But lets not kid ourselves, it is also a big ad for Kevin's ideas and Saatchi and Saatchi itself. I think it is a fair game. And they got the JC Penney contract from the book. Cool.

By the way, since then, Roberts has published "Lovemarks Effect" which goes into details of explaining the "how" as enough people complained. (smile)

Cheers,
Kempton

Disclosure: I am a big fan of Kevin Roberts (and I got the two books free for review) but then I am not spineless enough yet to defend Kevin blindly. (smile)

This sort of simplistic exclamation-laden writing is just the thing that totally turns off many business people. They see the fluff and don't bother to look for the NW Passage. But, here's the upside – the very fact that: a. it's printed; b. it's popular. will get some people to read it. And, maybe, must maybe it will get them to look at things differently (Get out of the office, etc.) Ending the "information addiction?" Well, I'd rather call it avoiding analysis paralysis.

Finally, all this reminds me of something Picasso said about modern art (I'm paraphrasing here). You have to start with something before you can get to the abstract.

Niti, yeah, it's all very Rousseau-ian, isn't it? Thanks! Grant

Tom, thank you, sir. Best, Grant

Daniel, Thank. you. very. much. Grant
p.s., no, I really mean it, and I am, truth be told, not, by any stretch of the imagination, just saying this, if you see what I mean, and I am sure you do, don't you?

"Get out of the office. Ask the great questions. (206) Call three consumers. Every day. (144) Give your brain a rest. Embrace emotion. Kick the information addiction. (190)"

I don't know if this will make you feel any better (and indeed it probably SHOULDN'T make you feel better), but: The excerpts you quote from _Lovemarks_ make me thing of a study I once saw reported in the NY Times. Apparently some medical researchers had a series of essay written by young nuns who were about to enter a convent. They analyzed the essays to see if they could find anything that would let them predict who would later develop Alzheimer's Disease (which they could do because they had the later medical records of all the nuns). It turned out that the writing of those who would develop Alzheimer's was characterized by extremely simple, straightforward, declarative sentences with nary a relative clause in sight. Not that your sour grapes towards the author of _Lovemarks_ goes that far of course.

looks like a nice little series that was long overdue.

(… maybe also that 's exactly the stuff that bestsellers are made of …
-but, ohh my godd, that is not your intention, is it???)