Baked In: Do Not Buy This Book Under Any Circumstances

I read a review of  Baked In: Creating Products and Businesses That Market Themselves a book that promised to share insights on creating products that have marketing “Baked In”. Think viral marketing for physical products. The author is the mastermind behind the super creative marketing for the Mini Cooper and the 50 word blurb mentioned 3D Printers so I bought it immediately.

Don’t make the same mistake I made.

I would give you my copy to save you the money, but I am afraid it would act like a cursed talisman or enchanted tiki that would only bring you misfortune.

Of course it has no mystical powers, it is just a hackneyed piece of garbage targeted at the managers who might hire CPB to spruce up their brands.

I don’t hold business books to a particularly high standard, but you should avoid this one for three reasons:

1. It is outdated: It holds the iPod earbuds and OXO good grips up as two exemplars of design. Both are icons, but these are 8-10 year old examples. If you haven’t read an article or book on design or “innovation” in the last decade this might be fresh information, but these examples have been beat to death.

2. It is bland: We get it. To be innovative you need to “become a silo jumper” (foster interdepartmental cooperation) and “tap the untapped” (get fresh perspectives). How have you helped companies with inert bureaucracies do this? Again these are old ideas that are fairly well understood. The challenge is in implementation.

3. It “recycles” or rips off, you pick: This book could have easily been assembled by cutting and pasting from Seth Godin’s “Purple Cow” and IDEO’s “10 Faces of Innovation“. For instance the IDEO’s book has a story about Dick Fosbury breaking high jump records by using an “Innovative” approach now called the Fosbury Flop. Baked In recycles the story in the same context without a footnote. This is just one of many examples of lazy “borrowing” you’ll find if you waste your money and precious gift of life on this book.

I try to keep this blog positive, but I wanted to share a word of warning about a bad experience since it besmirched the the good name of 3D printing (it is mentioned briefly in the intro in a “Gee Whiz!” scenario). It is a shame, Crispin, Porter, and Bogusky is a very creative firm. They could write a good book, but this embarrassing effort is not it.

Tagged as: Crispin Porter Bogusky, Fosbury Flop, IDEO, Innovation, ipod, Marketing, Mini Cooper, oxo, Purple Cow, Seth Godin