Customer Reviews

Trends (Essentials (DK Publishing))

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've been a Peters fan for more than a decade, but find this to be one of his worts, most recylced efforts yet.

Trends?! - I'm more than 1/2 way through the book and the authors are still working to convince you that women are THE (of two, including seniors) important market segment of our future. Ok, I'm conviced! ...I was at page 5, maybe as late as page 10-15. They really didn't need to spend 80 pages doing it before they actually start writing about the trend, and how to 'recognize, analyze and capitalize'

Don't buy it. Skimming the book at Barnes&Noble is all you need.

I work in Account Planning for an ad agency and also lead a Men's Ministry for my church and I found this book extremely helpful in showing why men and women disagree on how to approach things. It's especially good when combined with David Murrow's "Why Men Don't Go To Church". When I showed a group of blue collar, non-Marketing educated, men the info in both books, I got nothing but agreement. I didn't find the info in Peters and Barletta's book stereotypical at all. I do agree that the type size could be bigger, but I didn't have a hard time reading any of it. I thought the Contrasts - which shorthand how men and women differ in thinking - was very helpful and I defy anyone to show the graph of how men shop vs. women (page 73) to either sex and not get a knowing laugh.

I'm not so sure of the content, beyond Peters and Barletta repeating what any trendster or most any person in business knows -- women and seniors are IT. But was impossible for me to read much of the text. I tried hard to read the black on hot pink background on one page, then black on lime green the next, and black text on deep angry red on the next. My eyes were fatigued by page 12 - seriously. I skipped to later chapters in the book, and found text in such teeny font that I was unable to read (to the publisher, should you care: examples: pp. 102-103, 132, 147 and many more.)

And Mr. Peters says seniors are the big trend? Does he know that even for the youngsters with strong eyes, this book was so impossible [for me] to read that I returned it to the bookstore same day. Seriously - headache from the strain of adjusting my eyes to the sharp colors and teeny tiny print. And I rarely have head pain. Gosh, don't buy it. Find something else that's readable, legible on trends, and needn't hide it's thin, shallow content with funky colors, many phrases with annoying ALL CAPS, and paragraphs including DIFFERENT FONT SIZES and FONTS throughout.

The worst pages were those with the ten "To-Dos" at beginning of chapters. Background was faded from sharp red to near white; couldn't read a complete sentence without eye strain. And then the "cool friends" segments ...light blue print on all black background...

If there's great content, all this cheesy, goofy, I'm-trying-to-be-so-hip-and-cool, off-putting act will be completely unnecessary.

I bought the book because I thought it would be about 'Trends' and might give guidance into products and services that could be marketed. After 10 pages I realized it was nothing of the sort. It seems to be a soap box designed to show the superiority of females in all things. I am not a chauvenist by any means, but I was offended by Martha Barletta's portrayal of men. And often her take on men vs women was just not accurate. That men care what people think of them more than women? Come on now..all her information is anecdotal - no statistics. Just ranting and denigrating men. WASTE of $$$. This booklet wouldn't have sold 100 copies if Tom Peters' - who happens to be a man -name wasn't on it.

This book was on target. Repetiveness is obviously important since it appears the top Fortune 100 still don't get the value of marketing to women, women-owned businesses and the Prime Time group. The book format afforded the reader the opportunity to creatively identify how it would respond as a consumer or a business owner (large or small). I recommend that every CEO who wants to increase its bottomline to read it over and over until their companies demonstrate this change management.

We have not received our Trends book which we ordered on the 19th November 2006. We expected it between 7th and 19th December but because it was around Christmas we thought the mail may be running late and left it to the new year. Now we are back from Holiday's, we have still not received the book.

Could you please look into this and get back to me ASAP.

Thank you!

I have tried to contact you, looking on your website site for an email address and could not find one, I have tried to reply to your emails that Amazon have sent me but they dont' alow me too. Could someone please look into this ASAP.