the latest is called How Brands Become Icons by some asst. marketing prof at Harvard Biz School i've never heard of. Flipping through it at work, it looks to read like a Bedtime Stories & Other Lullabys for Advertising Nerds, full of delicious all-time favorites such as the story of New Coke, VW, Harley-Davidson, etc., so in truth i'm incredibly excited to read it.
but alas, i admit, not far into chap. 2 and already disappointed. for an asst. prof at HBS, i'd expect a capstone publication to have a better start than a "the Oxford English Dictionary defines cultural icon as...". i think that's also how i started my 8th grade theses.
it's a cruel, yet expected, demise of most adv/marketing books. take something exciting, fun, crazy, unfingbelieveablycool and turn it into dry OED definitions dissected down word by word by word. thanks, but no thanks. i think i'll stick to the bill bryson's who can make organic chem stories seem fascinating and palatable.
