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OBD: Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion | 
 enlarge | Author: Lucas Conley
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $7.49
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 62712
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.9
ISBN: 1586484680
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.827
EAN: 9781586484682
ASIN: 1586484680
Publication Date: June 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A witty, trenchant investigation of a phenomenon that is shaping culture and business in unexpected, disturbing ways. The world is more branded than ever before: Americans encounter anywhere between 3,000 and 5,000 ads a day. Increasingly, brands vie for our attention from insidious angles that target our emotional responses (scent, taste, sound, and touch). In an ever-faster, more competitive global landscape fueled both by the rise of cheaper, foreign brands and by so-called housebrands (the eponymous brands of Wal-Mart, Target, and the like), American companies are in a mad dash to keep up. Branding, or identity-making, has begun to replace the research and development of yore. From the fertile crescent of branding (Cincinnati), to the laboratories of sensory specialists (musicologists and "noses"), Lucas Conley takes us on a long-overdue journey through the strange culture that is our own. As hilarious as it is frightening, Conley's investigation into the phenomenon of rampant commercialism (often backed by little substance), offers an illuminating portrait of an age of obsession.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 OBD?: big business' Out of Bounds Deception? November 10, 2008
Ink & Penner (Illinois)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
We quickly learn packaging is king. Never mind the old saying about the customer always being right. OBD says, today it's not about serving consumers but about pumping up products and getting into the psyche of shoppers, forever "helping" them do the "right" buying. In the end, the idea is to heavily increase "the bottom line" for company stockholders ...as hastily as possible. Author Conley details how "executives apply innovations to marketing... rather than to products and services." And it all works. -So, we consumers think we shop "by choices," do we?
Here's one good book that tells us how shoppers, from supermarket to car lot, are enticed, swayed, directed, influenced, encouraged, manipulated, schmoozed, and otherwise "helped" into buying what "they" want us to buy. OBD opens our eyes to tricks of the trade by marketers and advertisers, who work feverishly to have us pick Their (!) favorite brands off the shelf. He uses examples of familiar goods and situations: Froot Loops to Ford, Best Buy to Blockbuster. Volvo and Xbox. Ever think your neighbor might actually be "paid" to casually fawn over a great product he's been using lately? It's in OBD. How about companies that spend millions on subtle strategies to tickle your sense of smell in the store? It's in OBD. "Sounds" that direct us to certain products? Using lasers to put ads on eggs? -Most interesting! [Didn't someone years ago want to use lasers to put an ad on the face of the moon? (!) Maybe "branding" is not so new a technique after all.]
-But it's not a very uplifting book if shoppers believe in "carefully choosing." Product numbers may be limitless, but we learn real "choice" is minimally in play. Companies have the edge, Conley says. Indeed, here's an mind-sharpening alert that scorns (underhanded?) strategies and tactics that companies use to encourage us buy Their goods. He says CEOs enhance the aura of products, the charm of their packages, the glitz of their ads...without ever much worrying about actually improving the products. -And we, apparently as consuming "sheeple," bite every time at the trumped-up, branded bait. OBD explains it...but, too bad, doesn't much tell us what we can do about it. -If we could do anything about it at all.
The author does get a little wrapped-up in the analytical as he deals with "personal branding," and olfactory and brain-wave inventiveness. Here, he takes on a less-critical and more theoretical slant; and sometimes, it's hard to tell what he's getting at. Sometimes, the eyes automatically turn to reading in skim-mode. Complete with high-rent words like "activated zygomatic major," Conley abandons easy-to-relate-to, everyday products and services...and delves into the more abstract ...his thoughts on university studies, on CEO mindset, sensory logic...and, of all people, Freud. If OBD didn't suddenly morph into a thinly-layered, psychology treatise, it could have been a starting guide for beating "Branding Disorder." Luckily, "Getting Inside Our Heads" and "Getting Personal" are only two such chapters that come to mind....
-But more importantly, Lucas never actually defines his brand of "branding," making for some confusing passages.
For instance, is "branding" about hyping a product's name (as in its "brand name")? Is it re-doing a product's on-shelf look? -Can't be this alone because the author describes (unshelved, of course!) "personal" branding, or is it about the re-styling of people themselves? -About sneakily re-doing shopper thinking to favor a certain product? -Some new theory of eye-catching package wrapping? Is it tattooing the forehead or the back-end of a steer? Maybe it's all of this.
-Don't know for sure. Clearly, though, this is, overall, basic, textbook-like "psychology" on marketing and advertising, surely outstanding info if you like that sort of thing. Curiously, he's hit us with a pop-title that's all branded-up for consumer consumption! OBD. -A victim of his own research! In any event, the book's good, but it's not nearly a practical guide (as expected to be) to whipping the disorder [Obsessive Branding Disorder] Lucas Conley accuses the country of having.
Read it before doing the weekend shopping! After you've finished, going to the local supermarket may never feel the same.
Note to consumers and marketers. Roll up your sleeve for this overdue shot of reality. A quick and possibly painful jab. October 23, 2008
D. Stuart (Auckland NZ)
I love this book. Lucas Conley steps back as a journalist and documents with a palpable tone of fascination mixed with horror, the degree to which branding has become so powerful as a marketing tool, and so pervasive as a force in our daily lives. He takes us inside the world of researchers and branding specialists and reports on the subtle, sometimes insidious work. And he covers the topic with colorful, vibrant language. He's an excellent raconteur.
What I love is the fact that Conley stands back far enough to question the whole paradigm of branding. He pulls the curtains on some terrible branding failures (where smart execs threw millions of dollars to develop dumb brands) and questions whether marketers themselves have become too obsessive with branding as a solution to all marketing problems. Call Interband and see me in the morning? It doesn't always work.
More deeply, he wonders if our collective obsession with branding is also cheapening our life experience. What exactly are we doing when we look at the world through brand-colored spectacles.
This is by turns entertaining, informative and provocative. Roll up your sleeve. At 220 pages its a quick jab. And it'll be good for you!
 Thumbs up! October 19, 2008
D. Fagan (Dublin)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Having seen the author plug the book on 'The Colbert Report' I immediately thought it would be a book I would like to read...living in Ireland I had to import the book at extra cost...and having just finished reading it 10 minutes ago I can say it was well worth it.
I would recommend this book to anyone at all interested in how the companies of the world are infesting our daily lives with constant advertising and the ways in which they try to get under our skin to persuade us to buy their products.
The book being a little on the short side,would be my only quibble.
Best of Breed October 5, 2008
Tom Hays
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Having spent a good many years in advertising and marketing, and having read a great many articles and books about the subject, I'll have to admit I did approach this book with a more than casual interest in learning about the current state of the "art".
One of my all time favorites "The Hidden Persuaders" by Vance Packard, was the standard of the earlier attempts to dig into the underbelly of the mind grabbing beast called advertising. Well, we've come a long way, Baby.
Lucas Conley's book delivers marketing today, with specificity, freshness, and courage. A "no-holds-barred" look at the disorderly state of the marketing of "brands" instead of the "goods and services" they were originally intended to represent. I found it fascinating.
I originally purchased this book because of the bright red cover, the lettering style and the title. After reading it, I decided to buy additional copies for some of my friends in the business world. Of the books currently out there on the topic, I give this one "Best of Breed".
 Good read September 10, 2008
st starseed (Chicago, IL)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Perhaps the breeziest business book in years, Obsessive Branding Disorder hooked me in with its gloriously funny potshots at branding executives and the branding industry.
Examples: The state of Kentucky shelled out some $20 million for the words "Unbridled Spirit" and an ad campaign to accompany it, while Connecticut's tourism board assigned colors to each region of the state, because: "The psychology of color was used to further define the brand by zeroing on geographic characteristics or more ethereal elements," said a state tourism director.
If only Lucas Conley could have continued his assault on the world of branding. Sadly, beginning with the story of the Charmin Bath Tissue truck (Page 67), his writing flattens into a catalog of advertising methods and gimmicks the industry continues to trot out...entire stores devoted to a brand, packaged scents, and neuroscience.
(The list is not astoundingly different from other sound-the-alarm tomes of the recent past. Product placement on game shows, celebrities in TV ads, and even radio jingles were considered demons of the day, and while I'd personally argue (and agree with the author) that all of this marketing is taking a toll on our psyches, he provides no evidence that the latest gimmicks are going to be any worse than their predecessors.)
Only in the end does Lucas get back to branding, and this time, he takes successful shots at personal branding before finishing with some fairly well-written philosophical perspectives on the practice.
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