James Twitchell is freaking amazing. This book, and Living it Up, were both the perfect balance of sharp insight, wit, and breeze. The fluidity with which he goes back and forth between the language of marketing, literary and cultural criticism, keeps the writing fresh and surprising. Anyone who can find a way to connect Romanticism to advertising gets my vote.

The section on Museumworld is so relevent to silly things going on in the art world today. Referenced this a lot in art practice and gallery classes.

Twitchell, an academic from one of the fledgling and questionable PhD-producing English departments around this nation’s second-tier schools, outlines how corporate marketing genius applied to cultural institutions may actually be a good thing. Twitchell lists the ways colleges, churches, and museums have changed their offerings and missions dramatically in the last 20 years to align with demand-market sensibilities. In the post-secondary education world, the sensibility that “the customer is always right” has led to inflation in all sectors of campus life, from rampant grade inflation, to pompous football coaches, ginormous student union buildings with all manner of shopping opportunities and higher tuition. Universities have become brands, whether it’s the “smart” brand of Harvard or Stanford, or the “jock” brands of Oregon or Notre Dame. Twitchell basically argues that cultural and educational institutions must learn to align themselves with marketing - even though it’s kind of evil - in order to retain their “customers,” here in the form of students, parishners, and museumgoers.

Bailing. It's kind of an incoherent mess.

Followup to Living It Up, which I gave a 5-star "What a Classic!" rating, reaches further and comes up shorter. Twitchell is such an engaging writer he still tells a worthy story, but I think he's reaching too far for his penultimate premise.

The study of branding of megachurches, universities (particularly the top tier schools), and museums is fascinating. The chapter on churches left me feeling uneasy about some tactics of my own church. Yes, the church is solid doctrinally, but is it too "user-friendly", too focused on human marketing techniques?

The university chapter is an enlightening look at the admissions policies and marketing practices of schools that give little thought to what goes on in the classroom--because that's not what they're marketing! For example, Twitchell refers to his own University of Florida, where the graduate English program is maintained at huge cost (every graduate student getting free tuition and a $12,000 stipend in exchange for teaching undergraduates in a futureless job) simply so the University can score high in postgraduate rankings.

But in a short final chapter, barely more than op-ed length, Twitchell attempts to stretch his thesis to cover the literal branded nation--the selling of the national "brand" to the world as the ultimate form of diplomacy. Yeah, maybe, but Twitchell doesn't prove it, and is focused too much on what he knows and studies to the exclusion of other political, cultural, scientific, religious, economic, environmental, and historical factors.

This is a fascinating expose of the degree to which marketing is involved in the survival of three broad sectors of our society: churches, colleges, & museums. For example, according to the author, mid-sized public colleges will not survive. The cost of necessary continued marketing is simply too great.

At best tedious. He's got a couple of terrific ideas but not a whole book's worth of new ones. Like any academic he relentlessly points out how society manufactures itself.

As a teacher in an independent school though we should be looking to the branding ideas he puts forth for mega churches and universities. Still there must be better written marketing books out there, as this was clearly a professor's publish or perish book.