Aug. 3, 2010
BOOK REVIEW: 'Shift' Tells You How to Revive Your 'Brand' -- and Maybe Lose Some Weight
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
I finished "Shift: How to Reinvent Your Business, Your Career, and Your Personal Brand" (Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, 208 pages, black and white photos, index, $23.00) by Peter Arnell with Steve Kettmann with a great deal of trepidation. I wanted to rush to the window and yell out like Peter Finch -- he played anchorman Howard ("I'm Mad As Hell") Beale -- in the classic 1976 flick "Network": "I'M NOT A BRAND OR A NUMBER OR A BAR CODE; I'M A REAL PERSON, A HUMAN BEING!"
It would be my Philip K. Dick moment, but I didn't do it -- I chickened out. I decided to report on the book, rather than review it. Most of my reviews are reporting efforts, anyway. That's what I've been doing since January 1966 -- reporting.
I'm guessing that Kettmann did the writing, with Arnell, the branding expert whose firm created the new Pepsi Yin-Yang logo and -- probably most famously -- the DKNY brand for fashion designer Donna Karan, coming up with the ideas and bullet points. (A bit of trivia: Donna Karan and I share the same birthday, Oct. 2; she was born in 1948 and I was born a decade earlier. Other famous people born on Oct. 2: Groucho Marx (1890), Sting (1951), Gandhi (1869) and Rex Reed (1938)). Martha Stewart contributed the foreward, and her name is on the dust jacket, but not Kettmann's.
When some of the world’s biggest corporations need to revive their brands, innovate products, and rethink their images, they call Peter Arnell. Now in his fourth decade of branding and marketing for such companies as Samsung, Reebok, DKNY, GNC, and Pepsi, Arnell explains how you can use some of the same strategies that famous brands do, in order to improve your own image, life, and career. Arnell knows this firsthand because he applied many of these same strategies to transform his own life by losing 256 pounds.
And he did it without reducing the size of his stomach with surgery or going on an extreme diet. Read the book for details, but suffice it to say for this review that his doctor, Louis Aronne of the Weill/Cornell Medical Center in New York City, recommended that he get down from 406 pounds -- this 5-8 guy was huge! -- to 230 pounds. Arnell thought that was still to hefty, reasoning that he was really a 150-pound guy trapped inside a 406 pound body and decided to go for 150. His doctor was skeptical, as anyone would be: The failure rate for diets that seek to lose 20 or 30 or 40 pounds is high, so how high would it be for a 256-pound weight loss?
Arnell says he used the ideas that he employs in his eponymous firm, Arnell: Arnell created an idea he calls "Shift". With Shift, you’ll discover the steps you need to take in order to become the best you. Creating and revitalizing brands happens every day in business. Shift shows how you can make it happen for yourself and your personal brand. ("Shift" is also used by Nissan in their ads; I wonder if it has anything to do with Arnell's "Shift."
Insights such as “go helium” are used by Arnell to explain how he reached his ultimate goal of 150 pounds— and Arnell says you can apply his techniques to reach for your own goals. Arnell writes about how he “went tiger”— how to exercise your own discipline and commitment, without apology, even if that means bucking the norm. And by learning to reach out to your brand audience, you will come to understand the importance of your network of friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and family—your fan club—in keeping you motivated and providing the feedback you need for success.
Weaving together personal stories of his own transformation with stories about how he created transformative change for brands such as Reebok and Pepsi, Arnell shares his unique vision on how each of us can rebrand and transform ourselves, both personally and professionally, to achieve the success we desire.
It all sounds improbable, but he's got the before-and-after photos in the book and he's down to 150 pounds and it appears that he's maintaining his weight, so who am I to nitpick? Even if you don't have to lose weight and want to find out how today's "Mad Men" function, "Shift" is a worthwhile read. Take it along on your next out-of-town trip, on business or on vacation (do workaholic Americans take vacations anymore? I know the French and the Germans get six weeks off, plus quite a few four-day weekends, but is any employed American secure enough in his employment to take time off? Just wondering.)
About the Author: Peter Arnell, founder of Arnell, is one of the foremost branding and design experts in the world. Among the companies he and his team have worked with are DKNY, Samsung, Chanel, Reebok, Mars, Pepsi, Home Depot, GNC, De Tomaso, Fendi, Mikimoto, Special Olympics and Con Edison. He and his family live in Westchester County, New York. Website: www.shiftbyarnell.com.
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BOOK REVIEW: 'Shift' Tells You How to Revive Your 'Brand' -- and Maybe Lose Some Weight
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
I finished "Shift: How to Reinvent Your Business, Your Career, and Your Personal Brand" (Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, 208 pages, black and white photos, index, $23.00) by Peter Arnell with Steve Kettmann with a great deal of trepidation. I wanted to rush to the window and yell out like Peter Finch -- he played anchorman Howard ("I'm Mad As Hell") Beale -- in the classic 1976 flick "Network": "I'M NOT A BRAND OR A NUMBER OR A BAR CODE; I'M A REAL PERSON, A HUMAN BEING!"
It would be my Philip K. Dick moment, but I didn't do it -- I chickened out. I decided to report on the book, rather than review it. Most of my reviews are reporting efforts, anyway. That's what I've been doing since January 1966 -- reporting.
I'm guessing that Kettmann did the writing, with Arnell, the branding expert whose firm created the new Pepsi Yin-Yang logo and -- probably most famously -- the DKNY brand for fashion designer Donna Karan, coming up with the ideas and bullet points. (A bit of trivia: Donna Karan and I share the same birthday, Oct. 2; she was born in 1948 and I was born a decade earlier. Other famous people born on Oct. 2: Groucho Marx (1890), Sting (1951), Gandhi (1869) and Rex Reed (1938)). Martha Stewart contributed the foreward, and her name is on the dust jacket, but not Kettmann's.
When some of the world’s biggest corporations need to revive their brands, innovate products, and rethink their images, they call Peter Arnell. Now in his fourth decade of branding and marketing for such companies as Samsung, Reebok, DKNY, GNC, and Pepsi, Arnell explains how you can use some of the same strategies that famous brands do, in order to improve your own image, life, and career. Arnell knows this firsthand because he applied many of these same strategies to transform his own life by losing 256 pounds.
And he did it without reducing the size of his stomach with surgery or going on an extreme diet. Read the book for details, but suffice it to say for this review that his doctor, Louis Aronne of the Weill/Cornell Medical Center in New York City, recommended that he get down from 406 pounds -- this 5-8 guy was huge! -- to 230 pounds. Arnell thought that was still to hefty, reasoning that he was really a 150-pound guy trapped inside a 406 pound body and decided to go for 150. His doctor was skeptical, as anyone would be: The failure rate for diets that seek to lose 20 or 30 or 40 pounds is high, so how high would it be for a 256-pound weight loss?
Arnell says he used the ideas that he employs in his eponymous firm, Arnell: Arnell created an idea he calls "Shift". With Shift, you’ll discover the steps you need to take in order to become the best you. Creating and revitalizing brands happens every day in business. Shift shows how you can make it happen for yourself and your personal brand. ("Shift" is also used by Nissan in their ads; I wonder if it has anything to do with Arnell's "Shift."
Insights such as “go helium” are used by Arnell to explain how he reached his ultimate goal of 150 pounds— and Arnell says you can apply his techniques to reach for your own goals. Arnell writes about how he “went tiger”— how to exercise your own discipline and commitment, without apology, even if that means bucking the norm. And by learning to reach out to your brand audience, you will come to understand the importance of your network of friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and family—your fan club—in keeping you motivated and providing the feedback you need for success.
Weaving together personal stories of his own transformation with stories about how he created transformative change for brands such as Reebok and Pepsi, Arnell shares his unique vision on how each of us can rebrand and transform ourselves, both personally and professionally, to achieve the success we desire.
It all sounds improbable, but he's got the before-and-after photos in the book and he's down to 150 pounds and it appears that he's maintaining his weight, so who am I to nitpick? Even if you don't have to lose weight and want to find out how today's "Mad Men" function, "Shift" is a worthwhile read. Take it along on your next out-of-town trip, on business or on vacation (do workaholic Americans take vacations anymore? I know the French and the Germans get six weeks off, plus quite a few four-day weekends, but is any employed American secure enough in his employment to take time off? Just wondering.)
About the Author: Peter Arnell, founder of Arnell, is one of the foremost branding and design experts in the world. Among the companies he and his team have worked with are DKNY, Samsung, Chanel, Reebok, Mars, Pepsi, Home Depot, GNC, De Tomaso, Fendi, Mikimoto, Special Olympics and Con Edison. He and his family live in Westchester County, New York. Website: www.shiftbyarnell.com.
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