My review of the excellent Face-to-Face book by Ed Keller and Brad Fay is in this month's Market Leader
[think you need a WARC subscription or membership of the Marketing Society to access]
In a nutshell: a must-read and a useful counter to what you might call our digital over-exuberance. It reminds us of the relative importance of influence the real world and influence online [and as our friends at MarketReach would remind us, Real wins].
Whilst this is in not an anti-digital book, it can be scathing about some of our worst excesses in the rush towards all things coded:
"When the history of the early 21st Century is written, will textbooks observe that internet users spent billions of dollars on 'virtual' animated online farm creatures during the worst economic slump since the great Depression?"
At the same time the combination of clear prose and strong evidence (more than mere collections of anecdote) makes this an excellent and reliable text.
And along the way there's lots to admire:
"The most successful businesses in the future will be the ones that embrace a model that puts people - rather than technology - at the center [sic]...[in particular]they will recognize that people have a far greater impact on each other than we previously realized, and that consumers are not just a collection of individuals"
A must read, even if - as I've mentioned previously - I don't happen to think that word of mouth [what people say] is even the most important part of social influence - it's what we see others do that counts.
It's I'll Have What She's Having NOT I'll do what she's recommending, after all...