Ged Carroll

Category: oprah time | 書評 | 서평 : 文芸批評

Welcome! I guess the first question that you have is why oprah time? Well in my last year of college I used to sit in the house that I shared with my landlord and write my essays whilst watching cable TV.

There I would be sipping tea, writing away and referencing from text books spread around me on the couch and coffee table. One of the programmes on the in the background was Oprah Winfrey. A lot of the show was just background noise. But I was fascinated by Oprah’s book club.

She’d give her take on a book, maybe interview the author. And then it would be blasted up the New York Times bestsellers list. This list appears weekly in the New York Times Book Review. Oprah’s book club was later emulated by other talk show hosts, notably the UK’s Richard Madeley and Judy Finegan.

On the high end you had Melvyn Bragg‘s South Bank Show when they profiled an author of the moment.

When I came to writing my own review of books that I’d read, I was was brought back to that time working on a sofa. Apple laptop in hand. It made sense to go with Oprah time.

You might also notice a link called bookshelf. This is a list of non-fiction books that I have kept. And the reasons why I have kept them.

If you’ve gone through my reviews and think that you’d like to send me a book to review. Feel free to contact me. Click this link, prove that you’re human and you will have my email address.

  • Science, Strategy and War by Frans P.B. Osinga

    Science, Strategy and War isn’t a book that would have normally made it on to my reading list, but we’re living in strange times. The book is an analysis of the history and strategic theory created over time by John Boyd.

    Boyd’s thinking led to the development of post-Vietnam, pre-stealth fighter aircraft that dominated the world’s skies. Boyd employed his experience and the insight that a ‘Swiss Army knife’ approach seldom provided an adequate design solution. A lesson that the US failed to learn when it created the F-35.

    Boyd was also responsible for creating the ideas that encouraged the US to move war into the IT space. Boyd’s thinking on strategy has shaped military thinking on tools, structure, integration and responsibility. What military-types call network-centric warfare. This seeks to translate an information advantage, enabled in part by information technology, into a competitive advantage.

    We saw the potential of this thinking in the first Gulf War when sensors, missiles and satellite imagery changed the face of modern warfare. What was less appreciated at the time by commentators is that this form of warfare was uniquely aided by Iraq’s flat terrain; which aided remote sensors and wireless networks. But the network-centric aspect really came into its own with William Owens’ paper on the system-of-systems which was emerging as the military followed Boyd’s approach.

    Ok, whilst there is some crossover with technology concepts such as Kevin Kelly’s ‘mirrorworld‘; where AR knits together networked information with location this is all pretty arcane stuff.

    Boyd breaks out of military circles

    John Boyd is particularly famous for a model called OODA which has broken out from its military origins. Probably the most high profile fan at the moment is Dominic Cummings – the special advisor to Boris Johnson and political activist.

    Cummings has talked about Boyd in terms of disruption and marketing of his political messages – through getting inside their OODA loop.

    Boyd’s ideas have also been picked up by sports coaches and even litigation teams in the US.

    OODA

    OODA or observe–orient–decide–act, is often described as a ‘loop’ and shown that way. However this deceives the audience of its true nature. As Osinga correctly points out; observe and orient are continual flows of information that feed into the decide and act functions. Strategists talk about ‘getting inside the enemies OODA loop’; that is disrupting their intelligence, understanding of their situational awareness and ability to act.

    Osinga’s critique of Boyd

    In Science, Strategy and War, Osinga sets out to do achieve a number of things with regards John Boyd’s ideas.

    First of all Osinga provides context, by providing a history of Boyd’s career in military service and as a retired service member and academic. Osinga brings a great deal of understanding to this part of the book as he also served in an air force and is an academic.

    John Boyd Climbing out of F-86 Cockpit, circa 1953
    John Boyd standing up in the cockpit of the F-86 Sabre that he few during his military service.

    Secondly, he explains how Boyd developed and honed his ideas over time. Boyd’s OODA model was borne out of empirical experience as a combat pilot. It was first used to change fighter pilots about engaging with the enemy. Use of it then expanded to encompass bigger strategic outlooks.

    Boyd read widely and had a deep understanding fo scientific principles due to his engineering background. He applied meta analysis to the great strategies and military campaigns of history and the literature describing them. He drew on his understanding of science to try and provide analogies for the many areas of uncertainty in implementing a strategy. He drew on the social sciences and concepts like post-modernism.

    Whilst Boyd was technical; Science, Strategy and War makes it clear that he wasn’t technocratic in nature. Boyd was keenly aware of human factors including the different aspect of moral power. I think that this one of the least understood aspects of Boyd’s thinking.

    I don’t think that Osinga’s book is essential reading for marketing. It was never meant to be. Instead, it provides a good insight into how many of our thinkers operate only at the surface level without truly understanding the concepts they talk about. Boyd was not a surface player, he thought deeply about things and read widely. In that respect I think he can be an example to us all. Osinga did a really good job at bringing this to light in an accessible way.

    More on strategy here, more strategy related book reviews here.

  • Megatrends by John Naisbitt

    John Naisbitt’s Megatrends was on the New York Times bestseller list when it was first published in 1982. Naisbitt outlined some big long term trends that he’d found as part of a decade of research. Hence the mega in Megatrends; though one could argue that macro may have been a more accurate term to use.

    I wasn’t that familiar with the work of Naisbitt; but came upon it by a circuitous route.

    My circuitous route to Megatrends

    I was introduced to the works of futurist Alvin Toffler in college reading Future Shock, The Third Wave and Power Shift. At the time these were cited on the technology degree courses my friends were on; as well as the marketing course I was studying.

    My house mate and I would talk about Toffler’s books as much Robert Pirsig or Emmanuel Kant, on the sofa of an evening sipping really bad instant coffee. I wouldn’t say that those were particularly happy days for me, but they did give me the time to think and read. Something that is much more of a struggle now.

    As I became more interested in Asia in the late 1990s; l read about how Toffler had influenced technocratic leaders from Singapore to China. I also started to read about John Naisbitt. Like Toffler, Naisbitt had done the Asian speaker circuits, met senior officials and conducted projects in-country through the 1990s. The management consultancy Toffler Associates eventually operated in China on government and private sector briefs.

    Compared to Toffler; Naisbitt seems to have become much more personally committed to China and central Europe. He has alternately lived in Vienna and in Tianjin, China. As the dot com boom kicked off I was reading this book. It fitted right in with similar writings from publications like Gilder Technology Report, Wired and Upside.

    LONDON
    Megatrends by John Naisbitt

    Back to the Megatrends review

    In Megatrends Naisbitt sets out X large scale long term trends that he sees in society

    • Information society and the rise of the knowledge worker
    • High tech / high touch – Naisbitt saw that roles would focus more on technology, or on ‘high touch’ sectors where humans aren’t easily replaceable like nursing care
    • Globalisation – a move in focus from the national economy to the world economy as the world becomes more interconnected
    • A move in strategic focus from short-term planning to long term planning.
    • Decentralisation of power and structures
    • A move from institutional help to self-help
    • Bottom-up governance across government and other organisations as a channel for public opinion
    • The move from hierarchies to networks
    • The population shift in the US from north to south
    • Increase in consumer choice

    At the top line we can still see much of these changes. I can see how Naisbitt’s vision of globalisation would appeal to the likes of Singapore and China. I am less sure about how Chinese technocrats would have made of bottom up decision making or as Naisbitt puts it ‘participatory democracy’.

    Naisbitt failed to take the next logical step; to look at the interactions between the trends. Instead the chapters remained siloed, rather than in context.

    For instance that the decline of hierarchies and rise of knowledge workers saw layers of management shed by organisations. Or the link between consumer choice and the rise of globalisation.

    Conclusion

    Megatrends has value in the way that looks at trends without looking at the how (usually mentioning digitalisation or some similar vehicle of transformation). This is something that we probably wouldn’t be able to do now; given that our mindset is about big data and agile processes. More book reviews here.

  • Eat Your Greens edited by Wiemer Snijders

    Eat Your Greens is a selection of articles curated by Wiemer Snijders on all things that come up for discussion amongst account planners. Branding, marketing, some home truths about innovation and the value of creative. Much of it recycles the stuff that account planners know from reading Sharp or Field and Binet. In addition there are a few that specifically address diversity, inclusion – but excludes ageism in terms of the ways it talks about these as an issue.

    Where’s the value in Eat Your Greens? The answer to that question depends on where you are in your career. As someone who is established in my career, I found it valuable in a few different ways.

    Some of the essays from the likes of Phil Graves, Mark Ritson and Ryan Wallman, Rose and Faris Yakob, Byron Sharp and Amy Wilson are strong enough to make Eat Your Greens worthwhile in its own right. For instance here’s some of what Ritson had to say:

    “The modern marketer has created an entirely stupid dichotomy between ‘digital communications’ and ‘traditional communications’… There are just tactical tools, and they can only be valued and selected once a target and a position and a strategy are in place. What’s more, it’s clear that most successful campaigns combine multiple channels for optimum success. Most studies suggest that the more channels a campaign includes, the better the ultimate ROI.”

    Mark Ritson in Eat Your Greens

    Going through the essays allowed me to come up with recommendations of new reading materials referenced in the essays – I have been using it to bulk up my Amazon list.

    Essays that I would particularly recommend:

    • What Ails Marketing by Mark Ritson
    • Post-Truth Telly by Tess Alps
    • To Target Or Not To Target, That’s Not The Question by Shann Biglione
    • Everybody Lies – The Importance of Psychological Validity In Consumer Insight by Phil Graves
    • The Devaluation of Creativity by Bob Hoffman
    • Biting The Hand That Feeds Us? Why Advertising’s Love Of Novelty Is Doing Brands A Disservice by Kate Waters
    • Why Innovation Isn’t As Sexy As Business Books Promise by Costas Papaikonomou

    For busy marketers or junior planners, Eat Your Greens is a nice introductory point for a number of issues in marketing, such as the corrosive digitisation of marketing.

    I think it fulfils an important role. Particularly for junior planners as many agencies now rely on an army of freelance talent. Eat Your Greens isn’t a substitute for having senior staff developing younger account planning minds on the job. But given the current state of agencies, its probably one of the best options that we have. More book reviews here and my slowly updated bookshelf here.

  • Frank Miller – Ronin

    Frank Miller – Ronin (often called Frank Miller’s Ronin) was a graphic novel written in the early 1990s. In the story Miller looks to combine is love of myth and legend a la 300, with cyberpunk.

    The story leaps across time from medieval Japan to the distant future of New York. The Ronin of the title is looking to revenge his master against a demon. The New York that they fall into owes a lot to the dystopian vision of Mega City One in Judge Dredd. All the money has flowed to capital and most people are living at the edges of society.

    Frank Miller’s Ronin

    Miller explores links between mysticism and technology as it relates to artificial intelligence.

    Frank Miller has a grand vision in Ronin; full of interesting ideas, but it feels half-baked. The potential in the story isn’t fulfilled. The worlds that Miller has built in the book feel very one dimensional in nature. That means that the foundation that the story builds on feels insubstantial. Miller tries to paper over the cracks by moving the reader quickly from one ‘cell’ to another.

    I think that Ronin isn’t something that fits neatly into a short comic run and a trade paperback, but needs its own franchise to breath and develop further. There is a richness in there waiting to be tapped.

    The artwork isn’t as rich as other Frank Miller works such as 300, The Dark Knight Returns or Sin City. Instead it feels like concept sketches rather than a complete work, even the colour panels feel that way. Ronin feels like something it would be worthwhile for the author to revisit and develop further. But at the present time I can only recommend Frank Miller – Ronin for completists, who are fans of Miller’s other works and will overlook this story’s limitations. More book related posts here.

  • How brands grow part 2

    I’ve been re-reading How Brands Grow Part 2 by Jenni Romaniuk and Byron Sharp. Part 1 is well known. It is the go-to bible for consumer marketers written by Sharp.

    part2
    How Brands Grow Part 2 by Romaniuk and Sharp

    In part 2 Sharp and Romaniuk looked at business-to-business marketing, luxury marketing and influencer marketing. The things that I found particularly interesting in part 2:

    • The heuristics around business-to-business marketing are remarkably similar to consumer marketing. This means that even in B2B marketing, the importance of brand building is paramount. This is very much at odds with the way in which business-to-business marketing is practiced
    • Part 2 provides a much needed dose of pragmatic realism on influencer marketing. Influencer marketing carries the most weight with people that would be interested in the brand anyway. It is less efficient than marketers seem to believe. If you look at Unilever at the end of the Keith Weed era; influencer marketing took an outsized proportion of marketing spend that could not be explained in a world of zero based budgeting (ZBB) that the company had brought in
    • Romaniuk and Sharp manage to explain why luxury brands need sustained advertising to sustain their standing despite the very nature of luxury being hard to find (and so discover) unless you’re part of the cognoscenti

    Regardless of your marketing area both part 1 and part 2 will help you to be a better marketer. What immediately becomes apparent is that empirical research done by Sharp and company outlined in part 1 and part 2 are best viewed selectively.

    Fads become orthodoxy in the face of empirical evidence to the contrary. A classic example would be the headlong dash into digital regardless of its role in the marketing mix.

    It would be great if these books were paid attention to as well as read by marketers.