A good book-to-be (?)

A big thanks to colleague Nicole McGee for always having my back and catching all the stuff I miss! Nicole's find comes from the Branding Blog and a post about a forthcoming book entitled, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing. Nicole and I both agreed that the title alone was worth the read, but this looks like it strikes a chord with librarians and their work. Library services tend to fall into what's called an unsought product category, which consists of those things people don't normally think about seeking out unless they have to (like life insurance, for instance). [I'm overdue for a post about product categories, so keep your eyes peeled - I might just get to it!]. Now, the fact that our services are generally unsought until there is a pressing need, and that patrons/customers are more empowered than ever to be selective about the promotions they expose themselves to, means that it's pretty easy for them to filter us out. That's why I think this book could be really useful. The authors founded a company called Future Now, Inc. and have a patent-pending Persuasion Architecture methodology, which, from what I can gather, is used to apply customer information to Web designs that lead people to take action (in our case, use our stuff!). The book is based on this technique, but seems address both online and off-line sales strategies, so it will be interesting to see how widely applicable this idea of Persuasion Architecture is. The book is due out in June and if I get a chance to read it, I'll review it for you and let you know how it is or isn't relevant for us.