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Instant Appeal: The 8 Primal Factors That Create Blockbuster Success

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I read a lot of books on persuasion, influence and sales. The disappointing fact is that most of them simply rehash the same information and rarely provide any new and exciting content. Instant Appeal: The 8 Primal Factors That Create Blockbuster Success is not one of those books. Like a breath of fresh air, I rank this as one of the most informative books on positioning and persuasion I have read.

Instant Appeal: The 8 Primal Factors That Create Blockbuster Success will show you the primal factors that cause people to choose one thing over another, whether it be a product, a company or a person. The book is well researched and provides ample notes along with an index. These are things the less rigorious books in this field often lack. Despite this it is an easy and fun read. I did not feel it was overly technical, but that the technical information validated the points made in the book.

While theory is great, the reason I read books like this is to learn some fact or technique that I can apply that will have an immediate impact on my business or personal life today. Again, this book delivered. In every chapter of the book I found myself extensively underlining and scribbling notes in the margins on how I can apply the information.

I highly recommend this book. It is so good that it is one of the rare few that has a place on my desktop bookshelf, along with Kevin Hogan'sThe Psychology of Persuasion: How to Persuade Others to Your Way of Thinking & Dave Lakhani's Subliminal Persuasion: Influence & Marketing Secrets They Don't Want You To Know for immediate reference.

It doesn't take long to discover that Vicki is one sharp woman. I could hardly wait to turn each page to see what else she had written that would make me say "wow!"

Vicki has done her homework; if she makes a claim, she shows you where you can go to check out the sources she used. This is a professinally written book, but unlike many "professional" books that are painfully dry, Vicki's writing style is as entertaining as they come.

You'll learn new and useful applications for creating mass appeal-guaranteed!

Warning: Instant Appeal is not for dummies.

Vicki Kunkel digs deep into the inner reaches of anthropology, biology, and lots of other ologies for the purpose of putting together the final solution for instant appeal.

The urge to sit by a window or on the perimeter...just one of the anthropologic human universals that Kunkel points out is part of who we innately are.

This book covers a lot of territory but what captured my attention....what was instantly appealing to me was the 8 Factors of Instant Appeal
1) The Conspicuous Flaw Factor
2) The Visual Pre-Programming Factor
3)The Reptilian Comfort Factor
4) The Sacred Cow Factor
5) The Jackass Factor
6) The Biology of Language Factor
7)The Bio-Tuning Factor
8) The Mental Real Estate Factor

And this is really just the surface.

You gain a lot of insights from this book that most authors won't touch with that really long pole.

Instant Appeal is not without it's arguable flaws. I quibbled with Kunkel about a few of her interpretations of scientific data, but that says a lot in an age when no one wants to look at data at all.

This is a definite must read. You'll pull plenty of ideas and aha's from this book and be glad you invested the time in a really good read.

Kevin Hogan
Author of Irresistible Attraction

I bought 3 or 4 books on this same topic and found this one to be the most useful by far. It proposes a success factor and then clearly explains (in a very motivating way) the anthropology and human psychology behind the concept as well as direct research that supports the theory. I also love that it presents information that is comprehensive and adaptable. I have "soft information" that I can apply to myself and how I engage with others as well as things that are more tactical and can be applied directly to my business structure. It's amazing of how many little things can get in the way of the message that we think we are sending. This book will quickly and clearly empower you to be more constructive in your endeavors and eliminate some of the distortion and road blocks to success. There are some good things in some of the other books that I read on the topic but if you can only buy one I would suggest this one. It's an easy read but still chock full of well defined information.

Business collections strong in marketing strategies will find INSTANT APPEAL: THE 8 PRIMAL REASONS THAT CREATE BLOCKBUSTER SUCCESS to be a winner. The elements dictating mass appeal and consumer reaction are analyzed in a survey of eight strategies that trigger appeal responses at the cellular level. From why Scrabble went from a flop to a hit to how moral factors are used in marketing, INSTANT APPEAL is a 'must' for any business library strong in marketing psychology.

This book looks at the power of persuasion from a completly different point of view. Where The Power Presenter by Weissman based on decades of practise and results , Instant Appeal adds a very detailed research component to her years of practise and results. The net is that Kunkel shows you the how and the why of things working based on Universal Human traits, while Weissman uses his North American experience. Thus the Kunkel suggestions would seem applicable on a much wider world stage.

You will learn a lot from this book on basic communications and how much you can improve. This is not an easy read, yet the style is conversational and flows well. Kunkel could have used some much tighter editing to increase the white space on a page with a focus on using bullets and so on to help the reader retain the core concepts. I noticed that the last few chapters had paid more attention to how people learn making it easier to extract and retain the core lesson. Definitely a book to buy, read and reread and apply daily.

"I found this book very 'thick' with massive research, clever thinking, and astonishing eye-opening wisdom. Each chapter alone has more in it than entire marketing books. The author's massive expertise shows--it is staggering with the range of topics covered and its 22 pages of footnotes citing research from a vast diversity of sources. And, despite the density of topics, it is very well written, with just the right touch of humor and assertiveness. "Instant Appeal" certainly doesn't belong with the plethora of business books that look like they were written in a week, off the top of someone else's seminar. The author knows that we like to put things in categories and find kinship in what we buy. If you like to learn many new things and buy books that are worth more than five times what you paid, then this book is for you."
Bob Beverley
[...]

Can books make you more powerful? This one can.
Part of me wanted to keep it a secret...to give myself an advantage, because Instant Appeal gives you the secrets.
Vicki Kunkel shares so many researched, and surprising secrets of persuasion. You must own it, because you are going to want to read it again.

I bought this book on Kevin Hogan's recommendation with the idea that it might help me in my business as an artist and gallery owner.
However I found the book to be highly technical and with a few exceptions there was little that the lay person could understand. For example the author talks about 'the amygdala and it's fear-producing networks'. Sorry but I don't want to purchase an industry manual so I can understand the terms. Also too many subjective conclusions are drawn from computer models and focus groups.
I am sure Vicki Kunkel is highly expert in her field however I believe this book is more suited to those in her field who understand the technical jargon.
I also did not like the continuous reference to our ' reptilian brain '.
That may be a suitable term to use within the context of her evolutionary beliefs but, I found it offensive.
Suggestion for next book. Simplify, simplify, simplify.