Customer Reviews
Absolute waste of money and time! - By: T L K, 18 Dec 2008 
The good rating from Financial Times persuaded me to buy this book, which turned to be absolute waste of money & time reading it. I read the FT every single day & couldn't see how such a serious newspaper could rate such a book with so high marks. The author simply dismisses companies with thier effortS to launch new productsin new or existing markets. The author even claims that brands like 02 & Levi's have spectacularly failed which indeed is not true, 02 is a well known housename & the biggest mobile operatorin the UK. The author is really annoyingin his remarks why brands failed & wisely preaches his lessons if brands did so, they would have been successful. The book is just a collection of short statments without lookingin depthin each case. Many of the casesin the book are just mentioned & the reader would never understand why brands failed, if they failed at all. I believe the author should have amended the book as the edition i bought is 2008 & talking how 02 spectacularly failed is absolute rubbish. In other cases i have found that the author is wrong & the information givenin the book is incorrect & misleading. I WILL STRONGLY RECOMMEND TO PEOPLE NOT TO BUY THIS BOOK. IT IS NOT AN ACADEMIC BOOK WITH CORRECT DATA AND INFORMATION AND YOU THE READER WHO KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT MARKETING AND BRANDING WILL BE ANNOYED WHY SUCH A HORRIBLE BOOK WAS PUBLISHED.
Lack of depth analysis - By: J. Savickaite, 21 Mar 2008 I got this book for my marketing assignment & I was more than dissapointed. It can be interesting for leisure reading, but certainly this is not more than that. Some failures are describedin less than a few sentences, especiallyin culture failures, which doesn't explain anything. It lacks depth of analysis & I do agree that it seems like a clips from the newspaper. Just flashy titles...
Insightful - Absolutely Fantastic - By: Dougster, 09 Jan 2008 
Ignore Atuls review!!!
This is a fantastic book, I got it as a christmas present & couldn't put it down, it's an amazing & easy read. The stories are facinating & you find yourself asking how boardrooms of execs can make such stupid mistakes as the ones mentioned throughout the book, such as the lack of research when launching brands overseas!
Although some of the stories are known such as New Coke & Betamax the book goes into more detail explaining the how's & why's as well as the knock on effets these had on each company.
Clear structure & incredibly well written, can't wait to buy the follow up, Brand Royalty.
I agree with Atul's statement that it's not a marketing textbook simply because it's not supposed to be.
Successful Book about Brand Failures - By: Jay, 11 Mar 2007 A successful attempt at piecing together several stories of industry failures over the past decades - some of which are pretty familiar - the failure of New Coke, Betamax (as compared to the success of VHS), The L'Oreal Crap stick (or is it perfume stick ?) & the Chevy Nova (Nova meaning no-goin Spanish) are some of the examples. It is a good attempt to divide the failures into 'Idea Failures', 'PR Failures', 'Culture Failures' etc.
I wasin the midst of my MBA when I read this book & it surely gave me an edge when doing my presentations. The book may be about Brand Failures butin itself it is a success
Fantastic - By: elizabeth, 29 Dec 2005 This is a fantastic read. Gives a brief but incisive view of differnt types of brand failure. Examples are well written & easy to read, & more importnatly easy to remember. If you ever needed any examples to quote this is a must buy
