This book does do a good job of outlining how taking sensory impressions into account can dramatically impact the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. It also does a wonderful job of outlining how different ads can be aiming for differing goals, and how increasing purchase frequency is not always the bottom line for an ad campaign. Many of the points made in this book are the necessary and insightful extensions of the 'brand image' work that has been taking place over the last 25 years. The need for experiential consistency across promotion, physical space, product, and message is also a very important point well addressed in the book. The points made in the chapters are also throroughly illustrated with specific examples from well-known companies in recent years.

Still, I can't help but wonder if this book could be better served condensed into something of a 20-page abstract. It is filled with personal analogies, thought experiments, and this corny bit where a "MBA student" asks questions at the end of each chapter, essentially setting up a devil's advocate that proves remarkably easy to bowl over. I was also hoping to find many more references to academic research in consumer behavior to back up the claims made in the book, which currently rest upon selected case study, analogy, and common sense evidence. I think giving hard scientific evidence to many of the statements about the effectiveness of experiential / vivid / sense marketing would make this book much, *much* more powerful. Of course, the academic work might be lagging behind the pop marketing work, but it is still a deficit that needs to be addressed.

Still, it reads fast, contains some interesting ideas, and certainly presents a fresh viewpoint. The message of creating a coherent experiential platform for your brand is an important message, and you could do *far* worse in the pop/marketing field.

(as a somewhat personal aside, the pictures of the author in various business 'costumes', combined with what might be a bit of overzealousness in coming up with servicemark-ready acronyms for a number of everyday ideas suggest that perhaps the author takes his position as 'marketing guru' a mite too seriously. Of course, should we really be surprised that an expert on integrated marketing and promotion chooses to strongly brand himself?)

What makes Schmitt's book so unique -- and unique it certainly is -- is the consistent focus on meaning and interaction. Schmitt ingeniously shows how the static concepts permeating business education and practice today are woefully inadequate to the kinds of dynamic brand relationships required to excel in today's crowded consumer and media-centric marketplace.

Two aspects of the book really stand out. First, Schmitt breaks down the process into five parts, which, simplifying to facilitate memorization, he terms Sense, Feel, Think, Act and Relate; each is copiously illustrated with actual case studies, from Nokia to Tommy Hilfiger. Second, the book's clarity and engaging tone never detract from the solid core of research on which the book is based; Schmitt's scholarship not only fails to be marred by his innate sense of putting forth an argument though metaphor, but is substantially enhanced by it.

This is a book for which the term 'groundbreaking' was invented. As Schmitt himself might admonish you, it's something to be experienced.