The birth of a 920p marketing book

Erik Saelens, CEO of brandhome and I (Kurt Frenier) met a good 20 years ago and have been sparring partners ever since.

Back end of 2012 we met in the BUDDHA BAR in Dubai, where I used to live (note: I did NOT live in the bar!). Erik had just finished a speech for some M.East advertising students and I had just taught a marketing course for a group of MBA students at one of Dubai's universities. We were both frustrated ... so many interesting things happening in the world of marketing, and too little marketing people that really knew what was going on; or, that were really interested in making a change or showing true passion to understand marketing evolution. We decided not to just talk about it over drinks, but to do something about it! And, since we'd been talking about writing a book together, we thought no better time than the current to get started. We received a clear "calling".

And so it went: we started writing that very evening and wrote to each other every single day. The goal: each of us to write a paragraph a day and keep going for a year. That would give us a book of a few hundred pages. That - as you can see from the volume we delivered - quickly got out of hand. We had too much to say, and filled a full page a day, each, easily!

The second thing we wanted to achieve: do something never done before. There were a gazillion books about marketing already. Most of them were highly educational (even preachy) and all of them are very much one-way, one-voice, dictating one-viewpoint. We wanted to break through all of that and write something lighter-to-consume plus something of value to new marketers. And so, the tone of voice got decided: it had to read like someone is overhearing a conversation of two marketers having a chat at a bar. (That also quickly got out of hand ... all the bar-references crept into our writing: swearing, a reference to alcohol, and very casual language. We wanted to make it 'real', and so it is).

Third, and organically, without having to force it, we created some nice 'tensions' between the agency world (Erik, brandhome CEO) and the client/company world (me/Kurt, CMO at Pepsico). There are many different points of view throughout the book. We oscillate between theory and practice. And we sometimes strongly disagree on things. Makes it interesting. We think. We hope.

Last but not least, to keep ourselves motivated, we agreed to donate money to charity for every day we didn't write. Lazy as we got sometimes, we donate all in all close to 1,500 USD to the brandhome foundation, SPARK: https://museum.brandhome.com/2013/work/spark-post/

Interested?

You can find a free download of our book here. No strings attached. At all ! Just click and you have the pdf in front of you. That's who we are. Giving away our knowledge and experience for free.

Not sure yet?

Watch a 5 minute summary video of the book here.

Let me know what you think! Love to hear the good - the bad - the ugly. On the book, on marketing, or... on anything really.

Cheerio!

Kurt