want to write a business book blurb?

UPDATE: manuscript has been sent to all who requested it for blurbs. If you requested and didn’t get an email from me, contact me.

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For the past year, I’ve been writing a book.
(a blog post will eventually be written about the joys and struggles of doing so)

It’s due to the publisher the week of Thanksgiving. (thankfully)

This new business book will hit the streets (as well as bookstores and Amazon) in early 2010. It looks at how groups and the overall society relates to brands and how brands can relate back to their markets’ culture. The book is geared toward brand novices. But it can also can be enjoyed by branding experts as a fresh look at how brands relate to society as well as a refresher of branding basics.

I’m looking for experts with demonstrative credentials in branding, advertising, or other business marketing areas to offer blurbs about the upcoming book.  These blurbs will be used in the forthcoming promotion of the book with the possibility of some being used on the book cover.
(uh, exactly what is a BLURB?)

If you’d like to write a short blurb about the book, please contact me via email or twitter by this weekend.

A pdf of the manuscript will be sent over the weekend only to those respondents that have offered sufficient credentials in their initial request. (super bonus points for previously published business authors!)

You’ll have a week (until 11/20) to read the manuscript (it’s a quick read) and send the blurb back to me along with how you’d like to be credited. If after reading the manuscript you feel that you cannot offer a positive recommendation, you are under no obligation to do so.

Bonus for people who read to the end of blog posts: Currently, the book will be published without a foreword. If after reading the book, you feel you can offer a 500 – 2000 word foreword. I’d be delighted in talking to you about how we can do that.

And if you’re stressed that you can’t help me right now, don’t despair. After the first of the year, there will be a blog book tour, a sales blitz, and the opportunity to do reviews.

drinking new coke at disney

The great thing about established brands is that they all have a deep core element that they can always refer back to. This core attribute defines the brand in the public’s mind.

• McDonalds has the arches and the clown.
• Playboy has Heff.
• And Mickey Mouse is the square one that Disney can always go back to

But after building 81 years of brand equity with Mickey, Disney is rebranding the mouse. They hope to “re-imagineer” Mickey to show his darker side. They want him to be cantakerous and cunning.

What a horrendously bad idea.

For years, marketers have had the example of the spectacular New Coke disaster to use as a warning for brands not to mess with core brand attributes. We’re about to get another example.

Of course, Disney does have a problem. They’ve failed to keep Mickey relevant to a younger generation. But this is not the answer.

The first step of trying to make Mickey more edgy is an appearance in a new video game:

Epic Mickey, designed for Nintendo’s Wii console, is set in a “cartoon wasteland” where Disney’s forgotten and retired creations live….The game also features a disemboweled, robotic Donald Duck and a “twisted, broken, dangerous” version of Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World.”

A disemboweled, robotic Donald Duck.

Walt is spinning in his cryogenic frozen grave.