Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/62215
"CONSUMERS ARE SO INUNDATED WITH ADVERTISING AND PRODUCTS THAT ONLY A DISRUPTIVE IDEA WILL PENETRATE THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS." —Bang! tising in Bang!, which details the big-bang theory of getting a commercial noticed. "The Big Bang approach to marketing is tailor-made for today's world," they write. "Consumers are so inundated with advertising and products that only a disruptive idea will penetrate their consciousness. It's unlikely that any of us will ever be promoting a truly revolutionary product that com- mands attention all by itself. Thus it's all the more essential that your message be revolutionary." Lively anecdotes and dissections of actual marketing campaigns sup- port their theories of how to grab consumer attention with wacky and counterintuitive ideas. For instance, the authors' advertising agency, Kaplan Thaler Group, was responsi- ble for creating the annoying, ubiquitous, and highly memorable AFLAC duck campaign. Much of their advice is similarly unconven- tional, as they recommend taking risks, breaking traditional rules, and working in small, cramped quarters to create a sort of contagion of cre- ativity among staff members. The book is consistently entertaining and downright funny in places, but every story has a lesson and every scrap of information is relevant. It's an excel- lent read for anyone pursuing the field of product marketing. (Currency/Doubleday, $24.94) Quick Looks As business education becomes increasingly important around the world, various regions of the globe are experiencing their own unique challenges in crafting and teaching a basic management curriculum. Tesar has gathered eight essays by 19 authors to examine such topics as "The Role of Economics in the Management Curriculum," "The Use of Case Studies in Teaching Business Courses," "Learning Styles," and "Companies as Business Labora tories." In addition, individ- ual essays examine the state of busi- ness education in Moldova and the Czech Republic. (International Business Press, $24.95) International Business Teaching in Eastern and Central European Countries takes a close, hard look at the transi- tions under way in that area over the past 12 years. Editor George bust of the last few years was not quite as much of a disaster as it seemed at first. In fact, only about 1,500 of the approximately 5,000 dot-com start-ups have gone out of business, writes Edward Deak in The Economics of e-Commerce and The Internet, an overview of the eco- nomics of the Internet. The book examines the strategies, successes, and failures of key e-commerce firms, both business-to-consumer and business-to-business. Included are discussions of why grocery retail- er Webvan failed and why eBay has succeeded so spectacularly well. One chapter deals with the infamous dot-com IPO scandals that are still haunting major Wall Street firms. Another chapter considers issues of privacy and security. Intended as a The dot-com classroom text, the book makes interesting reading for anyone fol- lowing the fluctuating fortunes of technology stocks in recent years. (Southwestern Thomson Learning, $97.99) maneuvers. Unscrupulous CEOs aren't the only ones to blame for recent accounting scandals, he points out, noting how regulation systems and corporate governance also failed to provide ade- quate checks. To fix the problems, he calls for noth- ing less than a change in culture: "Managers must consider them- selves stewards of the investment community instead of lords and ladies in some corporate fief- dom....We can improve the credibili- ty of financial accounting." (Wiley, $39.95) ■ of 2002, the General Accounting Office found 919 firms that needed to make accounting restatements to correct faulty accounting reports. In Hidden Financial Risk: Understanding Off-Balance Sheet Accounting, Pennsylvania State pro- fessor J. Edward Ketz lists all 919 of them. He also succinctly describes and deconstructs what specific accounting transgressions occurred at companies such as Waste Management, Sunbeam, AOL Time Warner, Qwest, Tyco, and Enron. Along the way, he gives a pretty detailed educa- tion in calculating financial risk and hiding debt through a vari- ety of legal and not-so-legal Between 1997 and the middle z BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2003 57