Jack Covert Selects - POW! Right Between the Eyes

POW! Right Between the Eyes: Profiting from the Power of Surprise by Andy Nulman, John Wiley & Sons, 240 pages, $24.95, Hardcover, February 2009, ISBN 9780470405505 It is very rare to read the foreword of a business book and laugh so hard that you just had to tell as many friends as you could about it. By inviting successful actors John Cleese and Craig Ferguson to say a few words about his new book, Andy Nulman grabs your attention in the first five pages, with nothing more that the element of Surprise. It's become easier in today's Internet world to reach more people, but increasingly difficult to grab their attention and make them care. In POW! Right Between the Eyes, Nulman reveals the secrets and tactics of how to successfully use Surprise marketing to generate word-of-mouth and strengthen your relationship with customers. Andy hits you throughout the book with examples of Surprise marketing that will amaze you with their results. For example:

-How Oprah Winfrey used Surprise marketing with the "Everybody get's a car!" episode. Not only was it shocking that all 276 walked away with a free Pontiac G6, but website traffic skyrocketed 800% and helped Pontiac outsell its competitors by 20%, becoming a pop culture phenomenon.
-How Nintendo reinvented the videogame experience, by creating the Wii for people who previously had no interest in videogames.
-How Target earned $7 billion a year in free publicity by floating a temporary store down New York's Hudson River.
-How Gary Veynerchuk, from his basement, took his family's 6 million dollar liquor store and transformed it into a 50 million dollar Wine Library.

The first chapter of the book lays out why Surprise is crucial to creating good marketing, and then you're off on an eight-chapter ride spanning everything related to it--from what Surprise is, to "The Art of the Business of Creating Surprise." Each chapter ends with a clever summary of the important takeaways, leaving readers eager to move onto the next lesson. Andy Nulman, the king of Surprise, has succeeded in writing a book full of ideas that every organization can find value in. The outrageous stories and laugh-out-loud humor alone make it hard to put the book down, but as the CEO of Just for Laughs and Airbone Mobile, Nulman has the tools, knowledge and experience to show business owners, marketers, and organizations how to create practical and effective communication.