Unthinking
The Surprising Forces Behind What We Buy
Published on 26. January 2011
336 pages
978-0-446-57420-4 (ISBN)
Description
What do Howard Hughes and 50 Cent have in common, and what do they tell us about Americans and our desires? Why did Sean Connery stop wearing a toupee, and what does this tell us about American customers for any product? What one thing did the Beatles, Malcolm Gladwell and Nike all notice about Americans that helped them win us over? Which uniquely American traits may explain the plights of Krispy Kreme, Ford, and GM, and the risks faced by Starbuck's? Why, after every other plea failed, did "Click It or Ticket" get people to buy the idea of fastening their seat belts?
To paraphrase Don Draper's character on the hit show Mad Men, "What do people want?" What is the new American psyche, and how do America's shrewdest marketers tap it? Drawing from dozens of disciplines, the internationally acclaimed marketing expert Harry Beckwith answers these questions with some surprising, even startling, truths and discoveries about what motivates us.
To paraphrase Don Draper's character on the hit show Mad Men, "What do people want?" What is the new American psyche, and how do America's shrewdest marketers tap it? Drawing from dozens of disciplines, the internationally acclaimed marketing expert Harry Beckwith answers these questions with some surprising, even startling, truths and discoveries about what motivates us.
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01/2011
Warner Books Inc
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Harry Beckwith heads Beckwith Partners, a marketing firm that advises twenty-three Fortune 200 clients and dozens of venture-capitalized start-ups on branding and positioning. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford, Beckwith is an internationally acclaimed speaker. He is the bestselling author of five books, which, collectively, have been translated into twenty-three languages.
Content
- Intro
- Welcome
- Dedication
- Introduction
- Deciding Without Thinking
- The Very Strange Case of Kobe Bryant
- THE FORCES AND THEIR SOURCES
- 1. Our Childhoods
- I. Our Love of Play
- All Play, Some Work
- eBay and Our Other Toys
- Fridays at Maine South: Forever Young
- II. Our Love of Surprise
- "Chasing Pavements" Up "Solsbury Hill": How Music Gets Us
- Riddles & Rhymes & Theming Lines
- Issaquah's Wizards of Surprise
- III. Our First Love: Stories
- The Story Behind 60 Minutes
- The Great Communicator's Secret
- George Eliot's Grandfather's Wild Ride
- J. Peterman's Fantasies
- The Storytellers of Stumptown
- The Moral of Two Stories: Nike and Scion
- IV. Little Versus Big
- The Moral of a Hundred Childhood Stories
- Underdogs in the Mist
- 2. Our Culture
- I. Me: The Great Individualists
- What Howard Hughes and 50 Cent Showed Us
- Getting Bonnies and Clydes to Buckle Up
- The Solved Mystery of the $70 Watch
- Our Wish to Stand Apart
- Tattoos, Nightsters, and Design-Us-Ourselves
- The Rise and Fall of Krispy Kreme
- The Age of Me: Talking to Us
- II. We: The Great Togetherists
- American Gothic, Chris Isaak, and Cast Away
- We Are the World
- Tall, Dark, and Handsome? The Lesson of American Actors
- The American Way: Trust None of Us But All of Us
- Following the Crowds over the Cliffs to the Malls: 2008-2010
- The Hog's Wonderful Tale: CAAS
- Panera's Invisible Secret
- III. Lovers of the Familiar
- What Was in the Marshall Field's Name?
- The Fall, Rise, and Fall of The Mary Tyler Moore Show
- How the Mop Tops Cleaned Up
- A Sunday with Christina Applegate
- How the New Gets Old: The Ocean That Stopped Roaring
- GM and Ford: Did Their Familiarity Breed Our Contempt?
- IV. Eternal Optimists
- Hello, Norma Jeane
- Is Irrational Exuberance in Americans' DNA?
- Three Masters at Tapping Our Optimism
- 3. Our Eyes
- I. Our Need for Beauty
- Lessons from Our Keyboard
- Staring at a Hand Ax: Our 400,000-Year-Old Urge
- What Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast Taught Us
- II. What Is Beautiful to Us?
- The Circle and the Cube: The Shape of Beauty
- The New Beautiful
- Going with the Cognitive Flow
- The Masters of the New Beautiful
- III. Our Eyes' Sheer Force: Five Studies
- The Curious Case of Kensington High Street
- Golfers in Red and Goalies in Black: How Color Changes the Game
- The Mustang That Was Really a Bird
- Vitaminwater's Sleight of Hand
- The Man Who Crushed the Box
- Unthinking: The Road Ahead
- I. Looking Back to Our Future
- II. The Eulogy and the Six-Inch Nail: The Startling Power of Expectations
- III. Why Wealthy Runners Limp: The New Frugalistas
- IV. The Cycling Clown and Wandering Gorilla: Our National Attention Deficit
- Summing Up
- The Unthinking Marketer's Checklist
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Acclaim for "Unthinking
- Newsletters
- Bibliography
- Table of Contents
- Copyright Page
