Some good books with that wine!

My friend Brad Berens, always challenges me to share my reading list with fellow marketers. I combine my wine interest with  good books.

Some I would recommend for you, How Did We Get to Be the Bad Guys: How Advertising Lost Consumers Trust And what it must do to get it back. Tom Wneks, great little tome that really does address some key questions. Read this book drinking a bottle of Veuve!

Also, let me suggest, YES: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini---a really good book on persuasion. This is my kick this summer along with some great French burgundies. (had to get the wine in there!)

To paraphrase the old "must see tv", the must read book of the summer is Value Creation: The Power of Brand Equity.  This book by Bill Neal and Ron Strauss is so powerful in thinking about how brands, even "direct" brands build that equity. I read that book in one setting with a great bottle of Corton-Charlemgane, one of my favorite style of burgundy. It was a Oliver LeFlaive 2000. 

In the wine vein, this was a good book, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink,  Tyler Colman. This is a damm good book, a good plane ride and one you will enjoy. Suggest you pair up with Ladera Howell Mountain 2004. I did and it both hit the spot.

I tend to use Barnes & Noble for my on-line book ordering--I like what they do and love their delivery options.

A Northern Rhone Experience

My wine group had their bi-monthly tasting this past Thursday (8.14.08). What a great evening and a learning one for me.  We even traveled to Walnut Creek in the east bay, I normally do not do east bay, but what a surprise that was--stars, moon, warmth, so suburban! The host, Rich Johnson class act member of our club. 

It was all northern Rhone--a region and wines that I am so pitiful in my knowledge and appreciation. Check out our evening from viewing the notes from the scribe, Steven Comfort! Check out www.comfortwinery.com. This will give you a great perspective on the wines that we have been having at our different events through the years.

What an evening and what a learning experience. We drank back to 1959. My personal favorite was a Jaboulet vertical 94.96.98.

Will be trying some more of these wines. A special shout-out to Quentin George who as a bi-coastal member of two clubs gave our table a special education with his tour notes in the northern Rhone, it added to an even great evening. We also added anew twist to the group--some members just chipped in and the host went out and bought some older library vintages and added to the special night!

New wines, east bay dammm 2 big treats in one week! Lucky in wine and knowledge. Got to get some good book knowledge. I have been reading up a storm since I have been  traveling a lot and school is coming up.

This book is solid: The Power of Persuasion: How we're bought and sold by Robert Levine. This is a really good book on advertising persuasion appeals. It is so marked up now and only four days old.  

As always drop me a note, post or let me know what your thinking. 

A Pop Culture Weekend

Was in Las Vegas last weekend for the Jerry Seinfield show at Ceasar's Palace. What a great show it was, he is truly the best in comedic timing, I have ever seen.

But what struck me as unusual is how truly branded everything is in Las Vegas and this from the ultimate ad brand slut. From the moment you land, all foods in the crappy United terminal, to the magazine choices (what started the whole pop culture thing), was this woman asitting next to me, apologizing for reading  People and Us Weekly. She said the only time she ever reads this "crap" is when she is coming to Vegas, she feels like shoe should.  Those magazines so define our culture at the moment.

Starbucks, Cinnabon, Burger King, the hotels and their intense branding efforts, and the stores in the Forum and the Mall are so over the top in the over the top city in America.

Have to put in a word for the dinner choice though--Bouchon, it is such a favorite of mine, in the Venetian, had some of my favorite pinot Kosta Browne (2005). But alas, that was the step out of the norm for me in the pop culture weekend.

I drank some Fetzer Chardonnay, Jordan Cab, so proletariat in my mind! But alas, it so fits!

And then had the ultimate flight home on the definition of pop--Virgin America. But go to tell, you ten times better than United. what a great airline, might be getting the nod. I talked to the flight attendant and he told me the wines they usually serve were small producers in California.

Well will be sending several updates yo you in the next couple of days. Even my reading that weekend was pop: the Bourne series new book,  Bourne Sanction!  Not even any business reading,