his book is just what it sounds like; a discussion of prominent consumer products that failed spectacularly, with special emphasis on things that failed due to their brand. New Coke, the Ford Edsel, Harley Davidson perfume, Sony Betamax, and so on. The book talks in very entertaining fashion about how they were marketed, what was wrong with that marketing, why they failed, what other products in their niche beat them, and what lessons can be learned from their failure. It's really quite fascinating, and you can certainly skip over the items you aren't interested in.

This is the first book I've ever reviewed on this site that I strongly recommend everyone read. It's not brilliant and it won't change your life, but it's interesting, informative, and a very enjoyable quick read. I wouldn't buy it since I can't see reading it multiple times or using it for reference, but hunt your library for it, put it on request, or just skim it in the bookstore. The whole book is about 250 pages, and I got through 120 or so in the library in about 20 minutes, before I realized I should just go ahead and check the damn thing out and read it thoroughly, since I was enjoying it so much. And I was glad I did, since I got to read it in a comfortable chair, and Malaya liked it as well.

My rating?  Problematic.

I have a categorized rating system for non fiction, and the only non fiction book I have in the reviews section is no help. As you'll see if you check the review, I went ahead and used the usual book rating system for Patricia Cornwall's book about Jack the Ripper, since she wrote much of it from a fictional point of view, recreating the last days on earth for the women Jack ripped, and telling an involved story about Sickert, the man she fingers absolutely as the killer.

That review rating system won't work at all for Brand Failures, since it's presented as a series of short chapters, each of which discusses one product failure. So I'm going to combine the rating systems for novels and documentary films, and take some categories from each. 

Brand Failures, by Matt Haig
Concept: 8
Presentation: 7
Writing Quality: 7
Presents/Explains the Topic Clearly: 8
Entertainment Value: 7
Rereadability: 6
Overall: 8

My only criticisms are of degrees. I would have liked the book to be longer and more detailed, especially in terms of the data. There was a lot of analysis and anecdote, but few stats and figures. I wanted tables listing start/close dates, money spent on promotion, market share, projected market share, and so on. I'm sure some of those would have been very hard to get, after all a company isn't going to freely share information on how much money and time they wasted on their horrible failure of a product launch. But that's why I'm a reader, he's the investigative journalist and author, and educated guesses are everyone's friend.

There were also a lot of products I didn't remember or hadn't heard of, mostly since they were things pitched in the UK or Europe, rather than the US. That's fine, the book was written by a UK author anyway, but I just wanted more background information so I'd know what they were talking about. There was one section on a new type of orange soda that failed spectacularly in India, and I enjoyed it even though I knew nothing about it, because that chapter explained why it failed, and gave enough background info about how selling soda works in India to explain things.

Basically, the book is written by an advertising industry insider and his level of assumed knowledge is a bit too high in some areas. He could spend some more time talking about good vs. bad market research, how limited consumer testing works, how advertising for given products is conceived and targeted, etc, as well as giving more background info about the UK soap market, so I'd know why a new type of soap was such a bad idea. I assume that would work in both ways; people in the UK or Europe or Oz or wherever probably don't know much about what the brand name Harley Davidson means in the US, so more explanation for most everything would be fine.

More explanation, more tables, more figures, more everything. Not the worst complaint to have after reading a book, I don't think.

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