If you hate making money and the feeling of a mind-blowing, toe curling orgasm-stay far away from this book. In "Branding is Sex," brand dominatrix Deb Gabor explains how proper brand positioning gets your customers in the mood. In just seven short and sweet chapters, Deb covers these juicy topics and more: How the most successful brands in the world get their customers laid How to never fail The Bullshit Test Who your brand should hop in the sack with (and it's not who you think) Don't rot in the brand graveyard like Blackberry, Oldsmobile, Circuit City, Compaq, Blockbuster Video, and Pets.com. Get your sexy back and move from being "just friends" with your customers to being long-term "friends with benefits." "Branding is Sex" provides you with a concrete foundation and a basic how-to plan for building or re-igniting your brand without needing a PhD.

How to get someone, somewhere, to do something. The job is using words, pictures, stories, and music to seduce strangers. In the industrial, mass-media, consumer economy of the past, the job was called advertising, and “Mad Men” did it. In today’s service-based, social media-focused, information economy, the job is called life, and everyone does it. Here’s how you can do it. And do it better.

Eventually, every organization faces a serious branding disaster. Think of United Airlines, Wells Fargo, Uber, and other companies whose tribulations made front page news. Poor business decisions, corrupt cultures, or just plain bad luck can lead to major PR meltdowns, sending once-loyal consumers fleeing in droves. But there's a right way to handle controversy and come out stronger on the other side.Using recent high-profile brand implosions as prime examples, Deb Gabor demonstrates how top companies that break their promises inevitably suffer, and she explores the routes the more agile ones have taken to full recovery after letting their customers down. One of the world's premier branding experts, Gabor provides invaluable insights that will help your own enterprise build positive brand equity, good will, and the "irrational loyalty" that will support your brand long-term through the best and worst of times.This is your essential guide to building Irrational Loyalty.

An instant New York Times bestseller, Dan Lyons' "hysterical" (Recode) memoir, hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "the best book about Silicon Valley," takes readers inside the maddening world of fad-chasing venture capitalists, sales bros, social climbers, and sociopaths at today's tech startups. For twenty-five years Dan Lyons was a magazine writer at the top of his profession--until one Friday morning when he received a phone call: Poof. His job no longer existed. "I think they just want to hire younger people," his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong? HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place ... by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at four thirty on Friday and lasted well into the night; "shower pods" became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby, while nearby, in the "content factory," Nerf gun fights raged. Groups went on "walking meetings," and Dan's absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had "graduated" (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee, and literally old enough to be the father of most of his co-workers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball "chair."

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

NATIONAL BESTSELLER We all know the system isn’t working. Our governments are corrupt and the opposing parties pointlessly similar. Our culture is filled with vacuity and pap, and we are told there’s nothing we can do: “It’s just the way things are.” In this book, Russell Brand hilariously lacerates the straw men and paper tigers of our conformist times and presents, with the help of experts as diverse as Thomas Piketty and George Orwell, a vision for a fairer, sexier society that’s fun and inclusive. You have been lied to, told there’s no alternative, no choice, and that you don’t deserve any better. Brand destroys this illusory facade as amusingly and deftly as he annihilates Morning Joe anchors, Fox News fascists, and BBC stalwarts. This book makes revolution not only possible but inevitable and fun.

Recently vilified as the prime dynamic driving home the breach between poor and rich nations, here the branding process is rehabilitated as a potential saviour of the economically underprivileged. Brand New Justice, now in a revised paperback edition, systematically analyses the success stories of the Top Thirteen nations, demonstrating that their wealth is based on the 'last mile' of the commercial process: buying raw materials and manufacturing cheaply in third world countries, these countries realise their lucrative profits by adding value through finishing, packaging and marketing and then selling the branded product on to the end-user at a hugely inflated price. The use of sophisticated global media techniques alongside a range of creative marketing activities are the lynchpins of this process. Applying his observations on economic history and the development and impact of global marketing, Anholt presents a cogent plan for developing nations to benefit from globalization. So long the helpless victim of capitalist trading systems, he shows that they can cross the divide and graduate from supplier nation to producer nation. Branding native produce on a global scale, making a commercial virtue out of perceived authenticity and otherness and fully capitalising on the 'last mile' benefits are key to this graduation and fundamental to forging a new global economic balance. Anholt argues with a forceful logic, but also backs his hypothesis with enticing glimpses of this process actually beginning to take place. Examining activities in India, Thailand, Russia and Africa among others, he shows the risks, challenges and pressures inherent in 'turning the tide', but above all he demonstrates the very real possibility of enlightened capitalism working as a force for good in global terms.