As I read this book, I kept thinking: "people will expect someone like me - from a big ad agency - to slag this off, so I must find constructive things to write about." But, I'm sorry to say, I failed. Because I found this to be one of the most banal books I've read in years.
At first, as I read, I felt mildly irritated. Statements like "most agencies are more concerned with building their own businesses than their clients' sales" are, let's face it, a tad stupid and mildly annoying. Stupid, because I'm curious what it is Zyman thinks a business is for - be it an ad agency or any other sort - if not for building up and making profit. But ignoring this slight daftness, the sentiment behind this statement is nonetheless annoyingly clear. This is an entire industry - largely made up of talented, extremely hard-working, dedicated individuals - that he's choosing to denigrate here.
But then, after reading some more, I got to the point where I just started to giggle out loud. How can anybody take seriously page after page of statements like "it stuns me that so many companies completely forget about the people who keep them in business: their customers ..."? Or "(let me) debunk the myth that any publicity is good publicity ..."? Or "the problem is that most people don't really get that marketing isn't about the ad; it's about communicating the benefits and features of a product or service ..."?
At its best, it seems to me the most this book manages to achieve is to rehash trite, commonplace observations like "everything (a brand does) communicates". At its worst, I just thought this book was nothing short of laughable.
I kept wondering who Zyman was writing for. And then I came across this absolute peach of a passage: "Barry decided to call the president of the Coca-Cola Company, Don Keough, to check my references. As Barry told me afterward, Keough was going on and on about how great I was, when Barry interrupted and asked, 'If he's so great, how come he's not working for you anymore?' Without missing a beat, Don said, 'He's too strong for us' ..."
Yes, Zyman actually wrote this. About himself.
Would I be too cynical, then, if I guessed that the bottom line is he wrote this book for potential customers of his own consultancy? (He mentions the Zyman Marketing Group at regular intervals throughout the book - you're sure not to miss it, I gave up counting after a while). If that's the case, then I'd have to assume that he was particularly interested in writing for CEOs and managing directors who've come up through finance or ops or manufacturing, and who probably therefore know very little (or even nothing at all) about marketing. Let alone brand communications. But they'd love to have access to an independent consultant who seems to a layman like they know their stuff, and who - more importantly - shares their suspicions about all those flash johnnies in expensive agencies.
In short, I felt this wasn't a serious book about marketing by Sergio Zyman, this was a book trying to market Sergio Zyman. The more I read, the more I came to believe he's interested less in educating his readers than he is in trying to sell to them. I could be wrong, of course. After all, Zyman is, as he tells us himself, too strong for most of us to stomach.
Well, maybe we can agree on that, anyway.
- This book review was first published on Haymarket's website at www.brandrepublic.com.