Mark Earls

I never thought I'd enjoy a book written by someone from an advertising background. And, to be honest, I probably wouldn't have read the book but for the fact I met Mark Earls in a pub, and he seemed like a nice bloke...! Whereas a lot of the current crop of new media business books are content to surf the zeitgeist by referencing each other and ignoring perspectives from outside their 'bubble', Herd tackles questions of how behaviour spreads with real intellectual seriousness. As someone with two degrees and a professional qualification in psychology, I learnt a good deal of new stuff about psychology, and I could tell (based on what I already knew) that Earls is not bluffing or hand-waving, but has fully grasped an emerging way of thinking about how people influence each other. More than that, he's tackling the implications of this for his own and other business sectors. And more than that, he's doing so with a wily eye for fakers and even a moral purpose (yes, in advertising). He's very good at writing about passion and authenticity in business communications. So why only four and a half stars? (A) because I'm stingy (B) because the book ends with a bit of a whimper -- it could have done with something stronger to live up to what went before.… (más)