Can’t Buy Me Like: How Authentic Customer Connections Drive Superior Results
Bob Garfield and Doug Levy
Portfolio/Penguin (2013)

“Absent now the ability to mesmerize the public on a mass scale, how can you be on the right side of all this teeming humanity?”

With regard to the question they pose, one that serves as the title of this review, Bob Garfield and Doug Levy explain, “In all humility, we believe we have the answer.” They certainly have their answer and it is eminently worthy of consideration. (More about that later.) They assert — and I agree — that “the currency of Relationship Era marketing is not awareness, nor even quality. Trust. Loyalty. Pride…[Therefore] your essence is transmitted in your relations with all stakeholders: customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, neighbors and the earth itself. In short: Across every function of an enterprise, corporations and their brands now can and must behave with their various constituencies in ways [begin italics] exactly parallel to human relationships [end italics].”

Please re-read that last sentence as an introduction to their subsequent assertion that “the most salient fact in accepting the ascendancy of the Relationship Era paradigm has not to do with its benefits so much as its inevitability. The universe has made the choice for you.” They then identify and discuss four forces at work, “converging momentously to dictate [the] future.” These forces are best revealed within the narrative, in context, but I am comfortable when noting that Garfield and Levy’s answer to the question is in the form of a framework, driven by the four forces, one that will help companies and their leaders to achieve several separate but related strategic objectives: (1) complete a transition from the rapidly deteriorating Consumer Era of mass marketing to the rapidly emerging Relationship Era whose defining characteristics are credibility, care, and congruency; (2) change their relationships with their stakeholders “but only after first articulating for themselves exactly why they are in business in the first place”; (3) achieve and sustain profitability as a [begin italics] consequence [end italics] of that understanding; and finally, meanwhile, (4) avoid “the most common marketing malpractices emerging in the digital world.”

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to indicate the scope of Garfield and Levy’s coverage.

o The Four Forces Converging to Dictate the Future (Pages 4-7)
o Apocalypse Now (14-17)
o There Is Trust and There Is Trust (39-42)
o The Three Cs of Trust (46-53)
o The Wrong Path (79)
o A Word on Methodology (87-89)
o The Bully Pulpit (103-105)
o Your Basic Win-Win-Win-Win (116-118)
o Introspection (126-132)
o How to Venn Friends and Influence People (132-156)
o Tilting at Epidemics (163-167)
o Now, Here Are Those Do’s We Promised You (168-170)
o Paging Isaac Newton (198-201)

Before concluding their brilliant book, Garfield and Levy cite a passage from President Barak Obama’s “State of the Union” address in 2012, during which he singles out Apple as emblematic of all that we as a nation should aspire to:

“You see, an economy built to last is one where we encourage the talent and ingenuity of every person in this country. That means women should earn equal pay for equal work. It means we should support every one who’s willing to work, and every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs.”

It is possible but unlikely that the United States will ever fully achieve these and other admirable goals but Garfield and Levy seem to be convinced, as am I, that those who read their book will be much better prepared to help their companies make and then sustain authentic customer connections that will drive superior results.

I realize that no brief commentary such as mine can do full justice to the material that Bob Garfield and Doug Levy provide in this volume but I hope that I have at least suggested why I think so highly of it. Also, I hope that those who read this commentary will be better prepared to determine whether or not they wish to read the book and, in that event, will have at least some idea of how create contagious products, ideas, and behaviors that attract interest, initiate online connections, and generate offline discussions.