Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back, Foreword by Guy Kawasaki (Hardcover)

by Rohit Bhargava (Author), Guy Kawasaki (Foreword)
Key Phrases: likeable hero, right story model, karmic marketing, New Styles of Marketing, The Accidental Spokesperson, Signature Is Not Enough (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The age of the faceless corporation is over. In the new business era of the twenty first century, great brands and products must evoke a dynamic personality in order to attract passionate customers. Although many organizations hide their personality behind layers of packaged messaging and advertising, social media guru and influencer Rohit Bhargava counters that philosophy and illustrates how successful businesses have redefined themselves in the new customer universe.

Personality Not Included is a powerhouse resource packed with bold new insights that show you how to shed the lifeless armor of your business and rediscover the soul of your brand. Sharing stories from the ethos of the world's weirdest city, to how Manga has taken the comic book industry by storm, to showcasing brands like Intel, Boeing, ING, and Dyson, Bhargava shows you why personality matters from the inside out.

In Part One, you'll be introduced to the key components to building a personality and learn how to:

• Recognize the greatest myth that most marketers blindly follow, and how to get past it
• Use the “UAT Filter” to understand the personality of your organization and products in order to develop a communication strategy that drives your marketing
• Create your company's “marketing backstory” using techniques pioneered by Hollywood screenwriters
• Harness the influence of “accidental spokespeople” and use it to your advantage
• Navigate the roadblocks of using personality that come from bosses, peers, investors, and lawyers, without getting fired or flamed
• Pinpoint and capitalize on the moments where personality can make a difference

Part Two is packed with guides, tools, and techniques to help you flawlessly implement your plan. It features practical, step-by-step lessons that help you effectively move from theory to action, and includes a valuable collection of guides, checklists, question forms, printable resources, and more.

Don't be another faceless company-learn the new rules for succeeding in the social media era with Personality Not Included.

From the Back Cover

“Personality Not Included breaks down the old barriers between marketing, advertising, and PR and shows you how to nail the single objective of it all: creating powerful conversations with your customers and getting them to choose you over the rest.”
-Timothy Ferriss, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek

“Just being pretty isn't enough anymore, today a brand also needs a strong personality to survive. In Personality Not Included, Rohit gives you the techniques and tools to help your brand go from wallflower to social butterfly.”
-Laura Ries, bestselling author of 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, cofounder of Ries & Ries

“If there is one book I recommend every client and every agency person read right now, it's Personality Not Included. Every chapter gives you new ways to navigate an increasingly complex marketing landscape with clarity, nimbleness, and pragmatism.”
-Carla Hendra, Chairman, Ogilvy New York, Co-Chief Executive Officer, Ogilvy North America

“There are two types of small business owners-ones that know they are in the business of marketing and those that don't. For either, Personality Not Included is an eye-opening look at what really matters when it comes to delighting your customers.”
-John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 302 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (May 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071545212
• ISBN-13: 978-0071545211
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #240,767 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What kind of author gives his own book just 4 stars?, April 8, 2008

By	Rohit Bhargava "rbhargava" (Washington DC, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As you probably noticed, I'm the author of this book - so coming here and adding a review for my own book might seem like an odd thing to do. Not giving it five stars probably seems even odder, but let me explain. This book is all about why brands need to have a personality. It is about avoiding being faceless and finding a way to add more authenticity into marketing.

Reading a book description written by a publisher is a faceless way to describe a book. I wanted to give you more than that. For a more real inside look, you can see the "making of PNI" section on the official book website - at the full name of the book (Personality Not Included), followed by dot com. There you can see photos, illustrations, original manuscript copies and lots of other material that will give you an idea of what the book took to write - as well as download the full introduction to get a sense of what the book is about.

Of course, I'd love if you buy the book here. More importantly, you'll find all my contact information on that site because I really want to hear what you thought about it. And to answer the question about why only 4 stars ... it's because I think the book is pretty good, but whether or not it deserves the top rating is really up to you.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Advice From An Insanely Great Book, April 17, 2008

By	Michael D. Yanke - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Guy Kawasaki illustrates in his foreword to Rohit Bhargava's excellent new book that it's not enough anymore to produce something great, rather, an absolute necessity to create something "insanely great." Otherwise, you are simply pushing your great product out into the market flush with other great products.

So how do we ensure we create something "insanely" great? We cultivate personality.

Luckily, cultivating a personality is - when boiled down to its basic elements, one of the easiest things in the world to do. Unfortunately, the exact same can be said of golf.

The power of Bhargava's book stems from its ability to take high level marketing themes and elements and make them instantly relatable through exercises, case studies, and pop culture analogies ranging from The Simpsons to Fletch Lives - from Die Another Day to Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Of course, sharing themes is only one half of the battle - and also almost exactly one half of this book.

It's second half is stunning in that it exists as a virtual how-to guide sharing new, yet proven, marketing techniques that can turn even the stodgiest, faceless corporations into the next corporate darling - seemingly overnight.

Techniques shared include karmic marketing - or doing something good without asking for a reward, antimarketer marketing - or making fun of traditional marketing techniques in general to prove you are above it all, and fallibility marketing - or playing up your own mistakes to build a personality.

In the end, "*Personality Not Included" exists in equal measure as a text book new marketing students will find themselves hiding behind the jackets of stodgy, traditional marketing tomes; and as a vital "how-to guide" for rapid cultivation of something many corporations will be embarrassed to admit they may have never had.

Students and kings of industry alike are encouraged to hold this book close at bay.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Read with Actionable Advice, April 16, 2008

By	Terry Starbucker (Stamford, CT USA) - See all my reviews

Should a business have a "face"? Should an enterprise exhibit human-like traits to set it apart from straight-laced, by the book and bureaucracy-deep "corporations"?

The answer to these two questions is unequivocally "yes", according to this excellent book.

I must confess he had me at hello on this one, because my bias was already pointed firmly in this direction, but nevertheless, Rohit did a great job of drawing me in with his no nonsense writing style, intelligent pacing and organization, and a clear passion for the subject.

Once drawn in, I was impressed by the way Rohit lead me through the process of properly "building" a company personality.

First he outlined all the key elements. I especially liked his "UAT Filter"- the three core qualities of a company personality: Unique, Authentic and Talkable

Spot on. And he presented great examples from several companies for each element.

Then Rohit did something that many book writers do not do - he wrote a "Part 2" that showed us how to actually put those elements into action, and gave us a bunch of tools to use to boot.

I'm all about the human side of a business. Actually showing that side to our customers is surely a good thing - it's the key to delighting them and making sure they stay with us for a long, long time.

Because people just aren't buying a product or service - they are buying "into" a positive experience. Rohit Bhargava, by virtue of his great experience as a marketing consultant, gets this "big time", and better still he's written a definitive book that explains it all in a practical, understandable and actionable way.