Blink

I just finished book #5 in my year long quest to read a dozen books annually, and this one was absolutely fantastic. I know everyone and their brother has already raved about Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, but I thought I would add to the accolades by throwing my review in with the mix. Here are the reviews by the NYTimes, USA Today, and Salon. Gladwell is the ultimate story teller and his books are always fun to read - well-written, new ideas, and well put together. As with the Tipping Point, the information in it is presented as largely anecdotal and is mostly told through stories.

The meta point of the book is to take a closer look at what goes into "gut feeling" or "snap decisions" - that instant reaction to a situation, a piece of information, or a person and forms the basis of your opinion. He narrates various types of snap decisions and what constitutes the information that makes them up throughout the book. One of my favorites:

The New Coke blunder - Gladwell talks through the process that went into creating New Coke. Pepsi was consistently doing better in blind taste tests against Coke, which made the Coca-Cola company very nervous. They decided to take the "Pepsi Challenge" marketing campaign seriously and to re-develop Coke so that it would afre better against what they assumed was the impending and unstoppable Pepsi threat. So they re-developed Coke to have a lighter and sweeter taste that was more like Pepsi. It had an immediate affect in the blind taste tests and when it finally pulled even with Pepsi in blind taste tests they decided to manufacture and release "New Coke."

Now we all remember what a disaster New Coke was, so the question Gladwell asks is, why? Why, when it taste tested so well, did it fail so miserably in the market?

"The difficulty with interpreting the Pepsi Challenge finds begins with the fact that they were based on what the industry calls a sip test or a CLT (central location test). Tasters don't taste the entire can. They take a sip from a cup of each of the brands being tested and then make their choice. Now suppose I were to ask you to test a soft drink a little differently. What if you were to take a case of the drink home and tell me what you think after a few weeks? Would that change your opinion? It turns out it would. 'If you only test in a sip test, consumers will like the sweeter product. But when they have to drink a whole bottle or can, that sweetness can get really overpowering or cloying.' Pepsi is sweeter than Coke, so right away it had a big advantage in a sip test..."

One of my favorite things about Gladwell is his ability to take diverse stories like this and weave his common story throughout. He talks about the Aeron chair, New Coke, face gesture studies, the OJ Simpson case, the LA and Detroit riots, and on and on and on. I know some have ripped the book for the lack of actual "science" but I look at it differently. I think it's cool how he takes stories from all over the realm of science, interviews the people who did the research, and tells a story. He's also an amazing speaker, which I am the rain king does an excellent job of talking about.