Agent Palmer

Marty Neumeier attempts to bridge “The Brand Gap,” but does he succeed? Two decades on from its publishing, I think there is more in The Brand Gap that is still relevant than some of the more dated material that’s just fun to reminisce as you read.

The book attempts to explain and educate the reader on “How to bridge the distances between business strategy and design.” And if that subtitle and the book title doesn’t clue you in, he is talking about brand value and how to raise it.

Despite all of the incredible television advertising catchphrases that still live in my millennial head, one still has a stranglehold: “The incredible, edible egg.”

Yes, yes, television was supposed to rot my generation’s collective brain, but it seems downright healthy compared to the subsequent generations’ digital diets. But that’s not the health I want to dive into.

I’ve reviewed business books before. Usually, they are boring, outdated, lacking in reality, “do as I say, not as I do” affairs which I am surprised I ever let sit on my personal library shelves.

Thankfully, Legacy of Winning finally breaks that tradition. Here is a book that is co-written by then University of Tennessee Volunteers Football Head Coach, Phillip Fulmer, and Tennessee Associates International Chairman and CEO, Gerald Sentell.

It feels like I have known Tim Matheson my whole life. The man is the voice of Jonny Quest, the actor behind Eric “Otter” Stratton, and Vice President John Hoynes. In between and since, I’ve seen him in Miami for Burn Notice and as an old curmudgeonly Doc in Virgin River.

Generally speaking these are my connections and touchstones to Matheson and his career. I thought, therefore, that I knew what I was heading for when I cracked the pages of “Damn Glad to Meet You: My Seven Decades in the Hollywood Trenches.”

The cover reads “You’re holding a book about a company you’ve most likely never heard of. This company has no Steve Jobs, nor does it have a CEO who jet-skis with starlets. It’s only the 461st largest company on earth, but were it to vanish tomorrow our modern world would immediately be the worse for its absence.”

The book in question is Kitten Clone by Douglas Coupland as part of a series of authors in residence, this particular edition focusing on being “Inside Alcatel-Lucent.”