BizThoughts

I'm more of a bimmer fanatic myself - a BMW fan. Even got a soft spot for convertibles. (Yea, I know what that says about me. heh.)

So it's a bit unusual for me to be doing a paid review for TheCarConnection.com's Mitsubishi Lancer reviews. But I'm also a very thorough researcher. It took me over two months to cull over countless reviews and assess assorted cars before I found one that I liked. That means TCC's reviews would have been something I would have bookmarked in my research.

I don't think I actually read any of their articles in my BMW search though, but that's probably because they didn't show up in any search results. I'm sure they want to change that. Hence this paid review.

If you're in the market for a Mitsubishi Lancer, you'll definitely want to do your homework. Buying a car is a major purchase. Any major purchase should be preceded with careful research.

To their credit, TCC does a pretty good job of reviewing the Lancer. Their review starts with a one-page summary called the Bottom Line. In it, the editor (who is cited by name so you know it's not some faceless bot) includes his Likes, Dislikes, and Buying Tips. The summary itself is pretty helpful, with good info about the car, its features, and its class. A comparison with similar cars is there too. It concludes with a one-sentence statement - the true Bottom Line - such as: "The 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer is a basic but sporty sedan with some tech features not often offered in this class."

Then there's a Full Review with a five-part section including Styling, Performance, Comfort & Quality, Safety, and Features - each of which is rated 1 out of 10. This rating is factored into an overall rating which appears on every page. Quotes are included and pulled out of other expert reviews, such as Cars.com, Motor Trend, Car and Driver, Edmunds, and Kelley Blue Book. I believe the rating comes from TCC's staff of editors, who read all of the reviews out there and aggregates them into a cohesive article. That's a pretty nifty idea if you don't have the time to read alot.

Complimenting this content are other helpful bits of info, such as a Photo Gallery, a 360 View, Trims and Specs, Related News, Other Expert Reviews, Consumer Opinions, Free Price Quotes, and related cars in which you might also be interested.

The Photo Gallery seems to have an odd discrepancy. At the bottom of the Overview page are a set of colorful photos, yet the link in the left-hand column points to a set of generic-looking images supplied by eVox Productions. The same set of images are in both redundant links, but I guess the editor realized that readers would prefer the more colorful pictures over the eVox pictures (and rightly so). This gallery is done in AJAX and scrolls through all the images automatically.

The 360 View is pretty cool too. It's an embedded Flash player - also from eVox - and rotates the car around. Neat. I'm kind of glad it's not a clunky Quicktime player.

The Trim and Specs are helpful. I spent a lot of time comparing the various trims of my car. Although no editorial content is provided in this section, the specs are helpful. It even lists the MSRP and fuel economy for each.

Related News pulls from other TCC articles. Other Expert Reviews links to outside car review sites. And Consumer Opinions also links to user reviews from other sites. The Free Price Quotes - probably another source of revenue (though how much they're actually making, I don't know; it's a tough market) - allow you to enter in your contact info so a nearby dealer can call or email you.

The related cars section is cool. TCC lists similar cars that it figures you may also want to check out. That's a nice feature.

In proper social media marketing fashion, buttons to share this overview on del.icio.us, Digg.com, Yahoo! Buzz, StumbleUpon, Facebook, and more, are all included.

Sounds pretty damn thorough, huh? It sure looks it. Although they aren't doing any actual tests on the cars themselves, they're aggregating info from around the web, much like Yahoo! (YHOO) Autos and MSN (MSFT) Autos actually. Yahoo! Autos doesn't have an editorial staff that aggregates various articles though, but they do have a way to get email alerts every time a new review is published on the web. MSN Autos does one-up TCC though. They include safety and reliability info, which I did use in my research. (Note: as of this post, MSN Autos doesn't have any reliability data for the 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer. Oh well.)

Other than that, there really isn't much I can criticize in TCC's review. It's pretty damn thorough and aggregates much of what is out there. The user interface is nice too; it's usable, readable, and easy to navigate.

A Palo-Alto-based VC-funded start-up called The Car Advisory Network, now called High Gear Media, purchased TCC in 2007 and gave it a huge redesign earlier this year. They look nothing like they did back in January 2008. And interestingly enough, a bunch of Yahoo! execs work there now. Hmmm. That's some mighty brainage. I'll have to keep an eye on them to see where they take this site… Nice job, guys.

I'm sad. The makers of Scrabulous have decided to disable their game for all North American users. Sniff.

This is the result of a struggle with Hasbro (HAS) and a suit filed against the Brothers Agarwalla—Scrabulous' founders—for violating copyright law under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Facebook Scrabulous vs Hasbro Scrabble

Fans of Scrabulous are now in an uproar. Don Reisinger of Masable says this move makes Hasbro look stupid. The official SCRABBLE® Facebook app is littered with comments like, "Boo, hiss. Way to alienate your corporation!" and "I'm going to extend my boycott to all Hasbro toys, etc." And a campaign has been started on The Point, calling for Hasbro to work with Scrabulous instead of shutting it down (though there only 6 members as of this post).

This has led to a great deal of negative PR, especially in the blogosphere. At a quick glance, I see a "RIP Scrabulous", a "No, I Do Not Want to Play Scrabble", and a "F U, Hasbro. F U."

On the other side of the equation are people defending Hasbro's actions. Or at least raising the issue of copyright infringement as a business benefit: is it "worthwhile to go after pirates, thieves, and copyright-infringers, or… simply let them be and consider it free advertising", writes Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb.

And… I don't see that many other bloggers supporting Hasbro in my Technorati search. Oh well.

Let's Make a Deal

All of this drama makes you wonder why Hasbro didn't just offer to buy Scrabulous, right? Well, apparently they did. While Hasbro and Electronic Arts (ERTS) collaborated to build the new SCRABBLE® app, RealNetworks (RNWK)—another company given the rights to create online Hasbro games—has been working with Scrabulous to "bring the official Scrabble game to Facebook users", writes Heather Timmons of the NY Times. (Funny, I thought that's what Hasbro and EA just did.) Furthermore, according to Peter Kafka of Silicon Valley Insider, an offer has been put out to & rejected by the Scrabulific Duo:

The hold up? Money. A source familiar with the negotiations say Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla want too much.

What's the gap? The brothers say they're generating $25,000 a month, or $300,000 a year in revenue. A 10x-20x multiple on that would make Scrabulous worth $3-$6 million, but for argument's sake let's say they'll have a hockey stick growth curve, and that their game project could be worth more than $10 million.

Sound fair? Maybe. But our source says the brothers want a "multiple of several times that" $10 million, and the four corporations they're negotiating with think that's ridiculous.

If that's true, then that's perhaps a bit optimistically presumptuous of the Brothers Agarwalla. $10M is a tidy sum for what is technically a copyright infringement.

Feeding Your Scrabble-Lust

In the meantime, to satisfy your Scrabble fix, you'll need to add the new SCRABBLE® Facebook app (or the SCRABBLE beta Facebook app; I'm not quite sure which one is the official official one). Unfortunately—oops—the app isn't working. Instead, you're slapped with a big fat "We'll be back up shortly. We're working on some tech problems and Scrabble will be ready to play as soon as possible!" message. This isn't their fault though. Alex Pham of the Los Angeles Times reports that this is the result of a hacker attack. (Perhaps from some die-hard Scrabulous fans?)

A No-Win Scenario

All of this amounts to a major catch-22 for Hasbro. Fighting against Scrabulous means loads of negative PR and possible damage to their business. Aligning with Scrabulous means setting a potentially damaging precedent to their business. (Yossarian lives!)

The Discussion Boards of both SCRABBLE apps are full of rants and more rants. And just how many pro-Scrabulous Facebook groups are there? Over 500, with Save Scrabulous clocking in at over 47 thousand members so far (including me). Wow.

The Scrabble board game may have enjoyed a surge in popularity due to Scrabulous, though it's impossible to confirm this since Hasbro isn't releasing their sales figures. I wonder if those sales will drop with this negative fallout.

However, I totally understand Hasbro's actions against Scrabulous. If they supported Scrabulous, they may unleash a disastrous tidal wave. Say Hasbro purchased Scrabulous for $10M, this web business formula could have emerged:

1. Build an online version of a popular offline game
2. Gain spectacular popularity
3. ?
4. Sell out for millions
5. Profit

And if you didn't gain spectacular popularity, the offline game's parent company would probably just ignore you, like Hasbro has of dozens of Scrabble knock-offs already on the web. Lots of upside for very little downside! Dollars galore!

Either way, Hasbro is sure in a pickle. In that context, I can see why they'd opt to shut down Scrabulous. Months from now, as the public backlash dies down, Facebook users may begin adding the new SCRABBLE apps to quench their Scrabble thirst, and perhaps forget about this whole ordeal. It's possible. Take jetBlue, for example. Back in February 2007, a severe ice storm took down over a thousand of their flights, leading to a major PR black-eye. Since then, they've rebounded from that episode. And if that's not a great example, take Martha Stewart and the ImClone scandal in 2004. Despite being jailed, she's back and arguably as strong as ever.

Hasbro could have handled the situation a little smoother though. But I doubt they had a web-savvy/social-media-savvy team of PR specialists on board (and if they did, WTF?). I would have recommended that they reach out to the community in some way. Maybe to solicit suggestions, maybe to implore an understanding. Even if people argued against them, just having a genuine public voice can sometimes earn a lot of empathy. At the very least, it could have softened the blow. This could have also come from Electronic Arts and RealNetworks, the makers of the online SCRABBLE apps.

Personally, I'm bummed as hell that Scrabulous is gone. I had quite a few games going there. I wish a compromise could have been reached, though I wouldn't have the foggiest how that would have looked.

R.I.P., Scrabulous.

Fricken hell. I just paid over $50 to fill up my gas tank. Way over $50. What I wouldn't give for a hybrid right now (and a hybrid & electric vehicle refueling station!).

With that said, everyone and their Mommas have been trying to cut their gas bills. The smart folks at ModBargains.com saw an opportunity in this and recently sent out an email newsletter full of gas saving tips, along with a gentle reminder to check out their products too.

ModBargains.com is an ecommerce shop that specializes in aftermarket car parts and accessories. The CEO, Mike Brown, started this site in 2005 with a buddy to sell parts for modifying BMWs. They started this while still in attending undergraduate classes at Chapman University. A year later, at the young age of 21, Brown was named the Global Student Entrepreneur of 2006 by the Entrepreneurs' Organization from among 10 finalists from the United States, Canada and Sweden. Smart guy!

And their gas tips are pretty smart too:

At the Gas Pump

• Buy gas at the coolest times of the day usually early morning or late afternoon when the sun is not up. At these times, the gas is the most dense, meaning you pump more gas in early mornings or late afternoons than at noon when the sun is at its highest point and density of gas is less. The gas pump measures volume of gasoline pumped through, not density.
• Avoid topping off the gas tank, overfilling causes the gasoline to slosh around inside and leak out of the gas tank

General Driving Habits

• Traveling at fast speeds in low gears can consume up to 45% more fuel than is needed.
• At highway speeds, use your a/c, and on city streets roll your windows down.
• When possible use Cruise Control. On highways constant speed, in most cases, saves gas.
• Drive at a steady speed. Constantly slowing down and speeding up consumes gas.
• Avoid tailgating. Not only is tailgating unsafe but the driver in front of you is unpredictable and can slow down at any second.
• When driving up to a hill, if you must accelerate, do it before you reach the hill, not on it.
• Try to avoid driving on rough roads when possible. Dirt and gravel roads use up to 30% of gas mileage.
• Stoplights are timed for motorists advantage. Staying at the speed limit increases the chance of having green lights all the way.
• Remove excess weight from trunk or inside car - spare tires if you have roadside assistance, backseats, and unnecessary heavy parts. The more weight in your car the less gas mileage you get.
• When traveling, use as much trunk space and cab space as possible to avoid using a roof rack that creates drag on the highways.
• Carpool. All riders help you buy. Carpooling reduces the amount of cars in traffic.
• During cold weather check car for ice frozen to the frame of your car. 100lbs can be quickly accumulated.

Idling

• Avoid warming your car up for prolonged periods of time 30-40 seconds is enough time.
• Idling your car for one minute consumes the same amount of gas when starting. Don't stay in a drivethru go inside.
• Avoid "revving" this wastes fuel needlessly and washes oil down from the inside cylinder walls resulting in loss of oil pressure.
• Accelerate slowly from a complete stop.

Recommended Check-Ups

• Get your car checked regularly to guarantee the best fuel economy for your vehicle. Keeping air filters clean maintains good fuel economy.
• Use recommended grade of motor oil.
• Inspect chassis and suspension parts for occasional misalignment. Bent wheels, axels, bad shocks, broken springs, etc. can create engine drag and are unsafe at high speeds.
• During good weather season remove snow tires, traveling on deep tire tread decreases gas mileage.
• Keep tires inflated to the maximum recommended limit. Get tires periodically spun, balanced, and checked for out-of-round. (check manufacturer's specs for max tire pressures).

Air Intake Advantages

• There is common misconception regarding intakes. Some people believe that it is only for making your car louder. Although this is true, an air intake system does more than that. Not only it make your car sound better, but it will also give you more horsepower and more miles per gallon. Since the engine is breathing easier, it doesn't have to work as hard to produce its power.

  Therefore you use less fuel. If you wanted to take your performance and your miles per gallon even further, then I would recommend replacing your catalytic converters to Hi-flow catalytic converters and install a larger-diameter exhaust system. Both improve exiting airflow from the engine and increase horsepower along with increasing your miles per gallon. Since you are saving money at the pump, these modifications will soon pay for themselves.

  With 18 mph with your stock intake, we calculate that with an aftermarket intake you should save approximately $500 per year by using an aftermarket intake of good quality. This is based on 30 miles per day of driving at $5/gallon.

Traveling Tips

• Before driving, plan your route. Determine your destination(s) and find the best way there–this includes the distance needed to travel to the destination, the amount of traffic involved during your commute, and the time of day you travel. Planning your destination ahead of time will help you save a significant amount of gas and time during your day.

  There are GPS devices today that include live traffic information features that will help you during your drive to your destination.

Low Price Gas Locator Websites

• Gasbuddy.com - GasBuddy.com can help you find cheap gas prices in your city. It is a network of more than 181+ gas price information websites that help you find low gasoline prices. All web sites are operated by GasBuddy and has the most comprehensive listings of gas prices anywhere.
• Mapquest.com - Mapquest Gas Prices finds the cheapest gas prices in your area. Helping you save money on your next gas purchase.
• Fueleconomy.gov - Fueleconomy.gov provides you with Gas Prices, Gas Mileage Tips, Articles on Hybrid, Diesel, Alternative Fuel Vehicles, and more!

Great tips, huh? An email newsletter with this much content is sure way to get forwarded to friends and friends of friends. The tip I most appreciated was buying gas at the coolest times of the day. I've heard most of the other tips before, but not this one.

A smart email marketing move if I've ever seen one, especially with today's gas prices. Brown & ModBargains.com: everyone and their Mommas thanks you.

Happy happy, joy joy! Google has updated their Keyword Tool. You can now get the exact number of searches on particular keywords.

That may sound pretty benign to you, unless you're an internet marketer of some sort. In which case, it's HUGE news. Enormous. In the past, you had to guesstimate the amount of traffic you could receive from each keyword. But without exact numbers, all you'd have were relative measures of effectiveness.

So why is knowing the number of searches on a keyword important?

You'll know which keywords are important to your customers

Say you sell portable GPS units. If you use Google's Keyword Tool, you'll find that the phrases "navigation system" and "portable navigation" are typed into Google much more often than "portable GPS unit". With this information, you can write product descriptions with those keyword phrases and bring in more traffic to your site.

You'll be able to estimate customer demand

If you are thinking about a new section to your site, the number of keyword searches can give you an idea of customer demand. This can even apply to non-web businesses. In John Battelle's book The Search, he calls search engines a "database of our intentions." Want to find out if there's existing customer demand for a new product line or service offering? Google's Keyword Tool can give you an answer to that.

You'll be able to estimate potential revenue for a new web niche

Affiliate marketers are always on the look out for new and untapped web niches. However, not all niches are created equal. Some generate more traffic than others. With Google's updated Keyword Tool, exact searches can be determined. This can be plugged into a financial model used to estimate monthly revenue per keyword. With this data, you can know accurately which new niches to tap into.

Up till now, internet marketers have been using the handy keyword service Wordtracker. One of it's more useful features was offering an estimated number of searches on particular keywords. Google's update now trumps that, since Google is able to provide the exact number of searches.

This doesn't mean Wordtracker is out of the game, however. They still offer other useful features, such as estimating the level of competition per keyword and a Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI), which helps find untapped keyword niches within a general topic.

The internet marketing world is buzzing with this news right now. Ed Dale, internet entrepreneur and marketer extraordinaire, even provides some information on how to determine the exact number of searches from Google's Keyword Tool.

And as Dale says, this is enormous! ENORMOUS!

You know what reminds me of that clueless little kid who always gets the joke after everyone else has gotten it, laughed, and moved on to another topic?

Hasbro (HAS) and Electronic Arts (ERTS). (No offense, guys.)

They just announced that they are going to be launching a Scrabble Facebook application later this month. Too bad everyone's been playing Scrabulous for the last year.

"Millions of Facebook users who have been playing it are unlikely to make the switch," writes Caroline McCarthy of CNet. "Who says they'll even notice the presence of the new game?" Too true, too true.

Technically, Electronic Arts is going to be the one actually building this app, since they own the rights to the digital versions of the board game. The rights to the board game seem to be a bit convoluted. While Hasbro owns it here in the US, Mattel owns it elsewhere. Weird.

To be fair, the dynamics of large publically-traded companies make them slower to react to new phenomenon like this. They probably already have a wish list of a thousand things they want to, and need to do. And a Facebook Scrabble game just wasn't on that list.

That doesn't change my opinion that they missed a really cool social media marketing opportunity though. They missed it, and a smaller player—Scrabulous—beat them to it.

Speaking of marketing for men, I just finished the book Branded Male by Mark Tungate. This was another free book sent to me for review. I enjoyed this book way more than the last one too.

The Pros

Mark Tungate is a British journalist and author based in Paris. His style is entertaining and witty, making this book a pleasure to read. I breezed through it quickly.

The chapters are organized to reflect a day in the life of a typical modern male in the UK, though some of this behaviors can be seen in US men as well. They follow him as he:

• Grooms himself upon waking (cleaning, shaving, etc)
• Selects his clothes for the day
• Thinks about dieting
• Furnishes his home
• Drives his car
• Travels for work
• Reads magazines & newspapers
• Uses electronics
• Stays in a hotel
• Watches TV
• Works out at the gym
• Drinks alcohol
• Eats dinner
• And, of course, has sex

As you can see, this covers just about every common activity a typical modern man has to do, short of personal hobbies & interests.

After each chapter frames the day in the life vignette, Tungate goes into the market research behind each behavior and quotes from numerous sources. Loads of anecdotal evidence is provided with each. Then a short & succinct summary, called a Branding Toolkit, is provided that nicely closes each chapter.

If you're a marketer for any kind of product or service aimed at men, you'll find this book interesting and chock full of useful tidbits, like juicy raisins in bland oat bran. For me, who hasn't had to do marketing for men before, I learned a lot from Branded Male. I especially liked the brief history lesson of men's fashion and how the modern-day suit came to be—apparently a "dandy" by the name of George "Beau" Brummell set the template for what is now the business suit.

The Cons

I found the numerous quoted sources a bit tiresome after a while. There are sections in the book where every other chapter is a quote from another source. While I appreciate the exhaustive research he's done, the quotes became distracting after a while.

This isn't a complaint at all, but US readers will notice that Tungate uses lots of UK spellings and phrases throughout the book. Lots of "colour" instead of "color", "looking smart" instead of "looking handsome" (or maybe, "looking sharp"), and "11.30" o'clock time notation instead of "11:30" o'clock time notation. Not a surprise at all, since he's a British journalist.

I really didn't have any complaints about this book. Fun read, useful information, good organization… I think I may actually check out some of Tungate's other books too, if they're as good as this one.

My skin is tingly. It gets this way whenever something new is on the horizon, something big.

I remember feeling this way back in college. Something called the World Wide Web was creeping onto the scene. It was still in the domain of universities and geeks. Then a roommate told me the Web was going to be commercialized. When I heard that, I looked at the web site I had just built, imagined making a career out of this, and felt my skin go tingly.

The new thing making me tingly is Social Media Marketing (SMM). Okay, maybe it's not such a new thing. Cutting-edge bloggers have been talking about it for a while now. There was even a conference on it back in April.

But I'm starting to see traditional companies peek into SMM. They're lifting the curtain, poking their heads in, and wondering if they should join all the fun. In high-tech marketing speak, the Early Adopters are starting to buy into SMM. Maybe even some of the Early Majority too.

So what is Social Media Marketing?

I define it as: a specialization of marketing that involves using online social media channels to promote a business's products, services, or brand.

So what is Social Media?

Good question. Chris Garrett describes it as the "tools, websites and software that allows people to connect and share." Scott Monty points to a very amusing video called "Social Media in Plain English" that explains it in, well, plain english:

Can you give me some examples of Social Media Marketing?

Sure. Since this field is still so young, there are a very wide range of tactics, some more effective than others. Here are some examples of SMM tactics:

Create an online video

That video above is a sweet example. It was created by the husband and wife team at CommonCraft Productions. They created a few free videos like that and "Podcasting in Plain English" and "Twitter in Plain English". These funny videos became viral and spread onto blogs like Scott Monty's.

The intent? To promote the services of CommonCraft, who've created explanation videos for clients such as Google (GOOG), Salesforce.com (CRM), H&R Block (HRB), and others.

Offer a free product/service to a blogger

The book publisher Kogan Page hired a marketing firm to send out free books to various bloggers (including me!) in the hopes that some of the bloggers would write favorable mentions or reviews. This can be tricky as some bloggers may write scathing reviews. I tried to be balanced in mine.

The intent? To generate more sales for Kogan Page's books.

Get your website listed on a link aggregation site

The link aggregation site Digg.com can be a massive traffic generator. If your website is featured on Digg.com, you can get an onslaught of users visiting your site. A couple of years ago, Richard MacManus found a way to game Digg.com and almost guarantee being featured.

The intent? To get a lot of visitors and new customers. However, the effectiveness of this tactic is debatable, as incoming visitors don't always convert into customers. It can still give you SEO benefits, though. But be careful about gaming Digg.com, as that can start a community backlash against you.

Create a common-interest group on a social network

Facebook allows you to create common-interest groups, such as the "Louis Vuitton" group or the "Chocolate = Love!" group. You could create one of your own, based around your brand, product, or service, and speak to your customers directly. It's like an informal, ad hoc focus group, but much cheaper.

The intent? To speak and listen to your customers directly. "It's like free market research" says one entrepreneur who's tried this tactic.

Write catchy content

Some call this linkbait, others call this just plain catchy content. Last year, Johnny Virgil wrote a hilarious blog entry about the 1977 JC Penny Catalog he found in his wife's grandfather's attic. His entry was so catchy and viral that it spread like a really bad showtune that gets stuck in your head for hours.

The intent? Well, Virgil wasn't trying to sell anything, though he's placed Google ads and a PayPal donation button on his site since then. But as a marketer, such a tactic could generate significant pageviews on your site, and hopefully some sales too.

You know what's cool about having a blog? Other than it being a exhibitionistic platform for vanity, public self-inflection, and personal branding, I mean.

It also means getting free stuff! A PR firm recently sent me the book Family Wars: Classic Conflicts in Family Business and How to Deal with Them by Grant Gordon & Nigel Nicholson, in the hopes that I'd mention it. So in the interest of full disclosure, let me get that out of the way first.

The Pros

Coincidentally, I've always thought it would be cool to have a family-run business. Not like a "operate from the back room of the Bada Bing" type family business. More like a business legacy that I can pass down to my children and children's children.

Having such a business can be fraught with backstabbing, cheating, lying, and betraying, so say the authors. In their book, they list countless case studies, from IBM & Ford to the Mondavi & Gallo wineries. There's also the rivalry of Adidas & Puma and the in-fighting at the LA Times, U-Haul, Gucchi, Guiness, Redstone, and many many more. Each example goes into detail about their family dynamics and individual personalities, making each sound more like a soap opera than a business case study.

The book is organized like a sandwich. The first chapter starts out with their psychological theories on family conflicts. Then there are six meaty chapters of back-to-back case studies. The last chapter follows up with a conclusion and reiteration of their theories.

My main takeaways from this book are:

• Learn how to be a good parent.
• Make sure you raise emotionally and socially intelligent children.
• Make sure you teach your children how to do the same for their children, and their children's children.
• And for goodness sake, don't spoil your kids!

There's actually a lot more to it than that. The authors prescribe a few formulas for dealing with various scenarios in the last chapter. These include pratical tips such as, "develop career plans for family members", "clarify roles of all working family members", and "agree to a policy for objective third-party oversight of the leadership selection process by independent directors, trustees and/or close advisors." That looks to be some very sound advice to me.

The Cons

For better or worse, contemporary authors of business & psychology books seem to have fallen into a particular writing style formula. Books like Freakonomics, The Tipping Point, The World is Flat, How Doctors Think, and Emotional Intelligence all do it. And for the mass market, I think it works. The formula is this:

Start each chapter with an anecdote. Make it fun and dramatic. Engage the reader with a real story about real people. Then go into the analysis, theory, and data of your point. In other words, start the chapter sounding like a story from a piece of fiction, then go into the relatively drier prose of your non-fiction.

Gordon & Nicholson don't follow that approach, making their book a slower read than its contemporary peers. So if you like that particular writing style, you're going to find Family Wars tougher to digest.

Perhaps it's the academic background of Nicholson (a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School), but I found the prose quite verbose as well. I would love to give the authors a copy of On Writing Well if I could. Hell, I wish I could give every writer in academia a copy of that book.

The analysis at the end of each case study seems a bit sparse too. To their credit, they unearthed an amazing amount of personal information about these companies. From all of that hard work, I expected a deeper analysis of each company and family. Sadly, this wasn't the case.

Still, the book is worth it just for the detailed case studies alone. Not only are they an entertaining read (especially if you like soap operas), but they'll give you insight into family-run businesses too.