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The most helpful favorable review
The most helpful critical review
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
brilliant, timely, eye-opening
I'm not a marketer, or all that interested in business-type books (though like most people I do like to shop). But this book was being reviewed all over the place and I saw it on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and I thought it sounded like the perfect business book. Well, it is. I couldn't put it down, and when was the last time I said that about a book about the...
Published 20 months ago by George DeMark
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159 of 170 people found the following review helpful:
Infomercial?
This book has a very interesting premise - using MRI to examine, not cognition, memory, or emotion, but advertising. And some of the results are rather interesting. For example:
- Negative messages (anti-smoking ads, say) can activate desires just as easily as positive ones.
- Strong brands can activate the same brain centers as do religious topics...
Published 21 months ago by C. P. Anderson
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159 of 170 people found the following review helpful:
Infomercial?, November 5, 2008
This review is from: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Hardcover)
This book has a very interesting premise - using MRI to examine, not cognition, memory, or emotion, but advertising. And some of the results are rather interesting. For example:
- Negative messages (anti-smoking ads, say) can activate desires just as easily as positive ones.
- Strong brands can activate the same brain centers as do religious topics.
- Indirect advertising (the coke glasses sitting in front of the American Idol judges) can be more effective than direct advertising.
Probably the biggest takeaway is that what people say and how they really feel are not the same. Actually, having written all this out, I'm not sure that these results really are all that unexpected and interesting after all. ;^)
My biggest beef with the book is how thin it is beyond the basic reporting of results. Yes, it actually is over 200 pages (just barely), but there is an awful lot of padding in there. Part of that is going over some very basic ideas (subliminal advertising, e.g.) ad infinitum, but also being extremely anecdotal. I like anecdotes, and feel they make for a great read, but the author really goes overboard - especially when it comes to anecdotes about himself.
In fact, the author's ego really gets in the way here. Here are some samples:
"But this study wasn't going to come cheap, and I knew that without corporate backing, it was dead in the water. But when I get an idea in my head that keeps me up at night, I'm persistent. Politely pushy, you might call it. Those twenty-seven messages on your answering machine. They're all from me (sorry)."
and
"By way of profession, I'm a global branding expert. That is, it's been a lifelong mission (and passion) to figure out how consumers think ... If you look around, chances are you'll find my branding fingerprints all over your house or apartment ... As a branding expert and brand futurist (meaning that the sum of my globe-hopping experience gives me a helicopter view of probable future consumer and advertising trends) ..."
and
"I've been told more times than I can count that my appearance is as unconventional as what I do for a living ... My features [he has a baby face], my raked-back blond hair, and my habit of wearing all black give a lot of people the impression that I'm some kind of quirky child evangelist, or maybe some precocious, slightly wired high-school student who got lost on the way to the science lab and ended up in a corporate boardroom by mistake. I've gotten used to it over the years. I suppose you could say it has evolved into my brand."
Overall, the tone of the book is more one of simply trying to drive business (including a URL to his site in the book's last sentence) than actually reporting anything seriously. A little sad, given the premise and all the hype and expectation the author tries to generate.
This also brings up the issue of ethics, which the author barely touches on. Apart from the issue of the book being basically a long infomercial, I also wondered about the intrusiveness and manipulation that would be inherent in applying some of the findings. It really only gets an oops-almost-forgot two sentences at the end of the book:
"Because that is a world in which we, the consumers, can escape all the tricks and traps that companies use to seduce us to their products and get us to buy and take back our rational minds. And I hope that by writing Buyology, this is the world I have helped bring about."
A much better read would be Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters - same large topic, but much more interesting, informative - and modest.
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74 of 82 people found the following review helpful:
5 minutes of clear thinking will answer every question you might have thought this book would answer., November 3, 2008
This review is from: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Hardcover)
This is the first book in a long time I felt like taking back, and demanding a refund.
Filled with common-sense observations inflated with info-mercial style prose, it's a shadow of the scientific study it claims to be.
Each chapter pounds you with juvenile "imagine this!" scenarios, while providing little scientific backing for the author's conclusions. After each disappointing narrative, he promises the next chapter has "groundbreaking new science!" Clearly, he has mastered the art of hype, for that's mostly what this book is.
Those looking for information on motivation and thinking patterns will be best served to look elsewhere.
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73 of 82 people found the following review helpful:
Should have been a 3 page magazine article, November 6, 2008
This review is from: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Hardcover)
This book was 50% review of other brands and ad campaigns, 30% bragging about how cool the "experiments" were, 10% new data that was only semi compelling, and 10% telling you what they just told you.
If they really stretched it, this should have been a 3 page article in a reader's digest. Maybe a 1,000 word article in the WSJ.
The most interesting thing I learned was about "mirror neurons" and how our brains imagine, e.g., eating an apple when only watching someone else do it. But that is not enough for a whole book. There were other tidbits but not worth the $ or effort to learn them.
I bought this book on tape along with "Tribes" by Godin. Audible is giving that one away for free. I would have paid $20 for Tribes and nothing for Buyology. It's almost as if the author of Buyology said "well since I have spent all this money for research I guess I should write a book."
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
brilliant, timely, eye-opening, November 9, 2008
This review is from: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Hardcover)
I'm not a marketer, or all that interested in business-type books (though like most people I do like to shop). But this book was being reviewed all over the place and I saw it on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and I thought it sounded like the perfect business book. Well, it is. I couldn't put it down, and when was the last time I said that about a book about the sly and subtle ways that businesses and advertisers try and get us to buy their stuff? By the time I put this book down, I couldn't even look at my iPod in the same way. Lindstrom carried out a global survey of customers using brain-scanning so he could peer into their minds as they observed various logos and such. Along the way he presents intriguing, and at times devastating, scientific findings on brands and religion (Apple computers light up the same region of the brain as do pictures of rosary beads and churches), subliminal advertising and tobacco, and most startling of all -- AND WHY ISN'T THE WHOLE WORLD REPORTING ON THIS? -- that cigarette warning labels, rather than discouraging smokers, actually make them want to smoke. Hello? I know we're in a crucial election issue, and that the economy is tanking, but the fact this isn't a headline around the world that's causing policy makers to rethink their strategies just boggles my mind. A superb, illuminating read -- easy to read science with fascinating anecdotes.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
A Triumph of Marketing over Writing, January 25, 2009
This review is from: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Hardcover)
I bought the CD of this book on impulse from a bookstore. I wish I had consulted the amazon reviews, for while the average rating is high there was enough meat in the low reviews that I would have likely left this alone.
I won't repeat what a number of reviewers have covered in more detail: that there is very little content and the presentation is tedious and self aggrandizing.
I will make two other observations: the first was how little they got for their multimillion brain image study. My 17 year old son was listening to part of it with me in the car, the part where they made the amazing discovery that Coca Cola was getting more value from their product placements on American Idol than Ford was getting for their commercials. My son told me "yeah, I read about that in a Foxtrot comic."
The second is that he did do a very good job of marketing a very marginal book. Maybe that could be his sequel: how to fluff up a magazine article's worth of content into a best seller.
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70 of 93 people found the following review helpful:
Buy at your own risk as more hype than revolutionary new ideas, October 21, 2008
This review is from: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Hardcover)
Buy ology is a well-crafted book organized around a series of fMRI studies of the brain. The premise is to explore the connection between marketing and neuroscience to understand why we buy. The premise is full of hype as Lindstrom explores connections between sight, sound, smell, sports, sex and religion and the brain.
Positioned in this way, the book should be a headline grabbing set of findings that change the way we think about brands, our purchasing decisions and the messages with which we are bombarded every day. Unfortunately, the conclusions of the brain studies are largely predictable and refine rather than revolutionize marketing and neuroscience. This makes the book a better magazine article rather than a 200+ page book.
Unless you are marketing professional or someone who has this as your hobby, your time would be better spent looking at other books that cover the same subject area with more detail and more science. I found Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee's Book "ON intelligence" and Daniel Pink's "A whole new mind" to be better books on the connections between neuroscience and social interactions.
Each chapter in Buy ology follows a similar pattern. The start sets up the issue, for example are brands as strong in peoples minds as religion. Then the author spends 20 or so pages providing review and opinion on the subject area. This part often repeats materials, stories, and findings found in every marketing book. Yes the usual suspects are quoted here "Apple's 1984" ad and the like. Finally in about a half a page, Lindstrom give the example -often based on a very small sample size - of the experiment. Then there is a rationalization of the findings that in the end maintains the status quo in marketing. For example: Brand placement in movies is more effective when the branded product in question is being used as part of the story rather than just appearing in the story. OK got it.
I do not have a problem with the science; its very interesting and I am sure is solid science. But the build up around the hypothesis, the rehashing of the issue and the not so revolutionary results make this a book to pass on in my opinion. In other words the hype and the verbosity definitely get in the way.
I am sure that this book will get much play in the media as it pits marketing against religion, sex against sales etc. It looks like this will play out along the same lines as Freakonomics - focusing on a single issue to drive controversy and attention. If you are interested in marketing, then you will most likely buy the book anyway. If you're like me and have a casual interest, then please be advised.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Basically good stuff, November 30, 2008
This review is from: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Hardcover)
Some excellent revelations, but laboured the point too much with anecdotal examples throughout. I felt the whole book could be summarized to about 50 pages. Still, definitely worth buying.
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
No meat, November 29, 2008
This review is from: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Hardcover)
This book was an interesting exercise in marketing. It starts out with an explanation of how totally cool and revolutionary the experiments were. Then, every chapter ends with a promise that in the next chapter you are finally going to learn something really REVOLUTIONARY. But you never do. I kept thinking: "Oh, this next chapter sounds like it's going to be great!" And then, it wasn't, but it looked like the next one might be. As far as I can tell, Lindstrom presents actual results from his much-hyped experiments in chapters 2 and 6. Maybe there are some minor results elsewhere that I have already forgotten. And these results aren't really ground-breaking, they just tend to back up what real psychologists have been writing about for years in much better books.
Anyway, the book has the feel of a short research article that was expanded into a book because it seemed like that might sell. Thus, there's a LOT of fluff, a LOT of space wasted on promising to tell us something really cool really soon, and very, very little actual information. Don't waste your time on this one.
What confuses me is all of the great reviews from places like Newsweek and the like. It makes me actually want to reread the book because it feels like I must have been missing something. I'm not going to, because I thought the book was worthless, but it makes me wonder: do people really not already know this stuff? If you know nothing about psychology, then, I guess, maybe this book could be interesting.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
Terrible., December 10, 2008
Absolute drivel. The egotistical ramblings of a man who has no concept of how to do science but a very inflated view of his ability to do so; you need controls Martin. As with so many imaging studies, the results can be interpreted in many different ways. Lindstrom simply takes the interpretation that makes the best story and states them as hard fact. Not surprising for one who has made his name in advertising, but not a very satisfying read. A shame, it was a great idea.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Great Premise, Terrible Author, July 13, 2009
This review is from: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Hardcover)
This book has a fascinating idea, using fMRI imaging to see what parts of our brain are used when we make decisions (thereby getting a direct look of how we actually make decisions and not how we "think" we make decision) - like for instance do most people buy a Prius to help the environment and save money, or do they buy the Prius as a statement to let everyone else know that they are conscious about the environment (random example)
Sadly, the books is basically a couple of mediocre ideas padded with a lot bad writing, unscientific analysis, and the author stroking his own ego through lots of bragging and patting himself on the back for his own brilliance.
This is a direct quote from the first page of introduction the describing the author:
"anyone seeing Martin from twenty feet away... [will see like] a slight blond creature that has just stepped into the spotlight. You wait for the light to fade, but it doesn't. Like a pre-Raphaelite painting, there is a glow that emanates form Martin as if he was destined to be on stage. No, not as a matinee idol, but as some god-waif. The man exudes virtue. Close up, he is even more starting. I've never met anyone with wise eyes, set in such a youthful face... you might ask him for an autograph".
Think of the type of person who would use that to introduce himself... seriously... and it just goes on and on...
"But this study wasn't going to come cheap, and I knew that without corporate backing, it was dead in the water. But when I get an idea in my head that keeps me up at night, I'm persistent. Politely pushy, you might call it. Those twenty-seven messages on your answering machine. They're all from me (sorry)."
"By way of profession, I'm a global branding expert. That is, it's been a lifelong mission (and passion) to figure out how consumers think ... If you look around, chances are you'll find my branding fingerprints all over your house or apartment ... As a branding expert and brand futurist (meaning that the sum of my globe-hopping experience gives me a helicopter view of probable future consumer and advertising trends) ..."
"I've been told more times than I can count that my appearance is as unconventional as what I do for a living ... My features [he has a baby face], my raked-back blond hair, and my habit of wearing all black give a lot of people the impression that I'm some kind of quirky child evangelist, or maybe some precocious, slightly wired high-school student who got lost on the way to the science lab and ended up in a corporate boardroom by mistake. I've gotten used to it over the years. I suppose you could say it has evolved into my brand."
I myself ignored the negative reviews bought the book anyways and paid for it with several hours of suffering through this book (there are very few books that I would describe as suffering). Please do not make the same mistake as me... here are some much better books...
Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions - a great book that covers a similar idea... basically we think we are rational people that make decisions based on logical thinking... but in reality there are several times when we don't make rational choices. The author brings up several real life situations that I'm sure we think about ourselves and does lots of experiments to test and understand our thinking. This author is not only intelligent (Columbia undergrad, PhD Cognitive Psychology at UNC Chapel Hill, PhD Business Duke, Professor at MIT and later Duke), but is a good writer (i.e. he can write nice, clean, concise sentences that get his ideas across) and his a bit of dry humor. I highly recommend this.
Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School - an interesting book by Molecular Biology at University of Washington that talks about how the brain works. He does keep things pretty simply though... so anyone who as taken a Intro to Psychology course in college will bit of the information as commonplace (but there are a few interesting things in there). Also his writing seems to feel like he's doing a live college lecture more than a book (that's just me). I somewhat recommend this.
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) The book that help start the entire genre. Very interesting. Highly recommend this one.
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