'The 360 Degree Brand in Asia' is an intelligent, insightful illustration of the best brand-building principles practiced at Ogilvy in Asia.
As a result, I'm afraid, it is a fascinating failure.
Firstly, this book's authors make the fatal mistake of creating a blatant brochure for their own company.
From the first title to the last page, the book is a manifesto for Ogilvy's 'proprietary' philosophy of 360 degree brand stewardship. Every process is an Ogilvy process, almost every case study is an Ogilvy case study.
The Ogilvy name itself is mentioned on more than 60 occasions - more than once every four pages.
Second, its scope is too broad and, as a result, its focus becomes blurred.
It is part communications manual, part ideological tract, part purveyor of interesting facts.
As a whole it becomes a confusing amalgam of ideas and information.
Unfortunately, none of its ideas, principles or processes are explained in sufficient depth to provide any powerful new use, learning or insight.
Lastly - and most seriously -'The 360 Degree Brand In Asia' fails to justify its own reason for being, in two critical aspects:
1. The 360 Degree Brand is meant to be 'about influencing everything a consumer experiences'.
Yet the book hardly refers to the interfaces that matter most: namely the customer's real experience of a brand's actual product or service delivery.
All the examples, processes, toolboxes and case studies are primarily related to customer communications. Try explaining that to the likes of Dell, Starbucks, Virgin or Amazon.com.
2. At the end of the book the authors define their 'challenge' as follows: to 'demonstrate to brand owners' how 360 degree branding can 'create both short- and long-term profit'.
In this, it utterly fails.
Nowhere in the whole of the book is the 360 degree philosophy persuasively related to financial value. Not in the descriptions; not in the processes; not in the case studies.
What we're left with is a book that is a fascinating failrure.
While the '360 degree brand in Asia's principles are sound, its information is insightful, and its content is thorough - it remains a sales pitch that does little to raise the standing of the communications industry within the boardrooms of Asia, for two fundamental reasons:
Firstly, the book makes the fatal mistake of assuming that communications are the most important components in brand value.
Secondly, it once again shows that even Ogilvy, one of the greatest communications companies in the world, remains just that: primarily a producer of communications, not a driver of business profitability.
Chris Jaques is from The Big Thinking Group.