• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer @mahoney_sarah, March 15, 2012

Don’t miss anthropologist Grant McCracken’s Culturematic: How reality TV, John Cheever, a Pie Lab, Julia Child, Fantasy Football, Burning Man ….will help you create and execute breakthrough ideas (Harvard Business Review Press). 

McCracken has a fine old time identifying hundreds of these nifty culturematics, as he calls them, “little machines that … test the world, discover meaning, and unleash value.” By definition, these ideas are a little wacky, but built on questions that spark some kind of curiosity. And while they are most likely to occur in small groups or people working on their own, these shots-in-the-dark do sometimes work for large marketers, and readers will love the backstories. 

What if we put a bunch of real people, not actors, in a house with a camera on them all the time? Meet MTV’s “The Real World.” What if we gave a Fiesta to 100 people to do whatever they want, as long as they post about it on YouTube? Thank you, Ford. Suppose we replay a high school football game that ended in a tie, back in 1993? It worked for Gatorade. What if we acted like we cared that someone was unhappy with our product, and tried to fix it on the spot? Enter the Apple’s Genius Bar.  

But for the most part, he concedes that the tricksters, time travelers, curators and practical jokers most apt to invent these little idea machines aren’t likely to be embraced by companies, or even their ad agencies. People’s closest friends probably mocked such ideas as Fantasy Football, Wordle and smart mobs. (In fact, if you’re a depressed corporate type trapped in the suffocating silos of a soulless large company, you probably shouldn’t torment yourself with this book at all.)

While you’ll get some how-to advice, the final chapter is enough to make an earnest Culturematic-crafter wanna-be heave the book across the room. His advice is to be more like … Nike. Or Starbucks. Or Apple. Still, this book will definitely lead you to a greater appreciation of your own inner curiosities. 

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The Face-to-Face Book: Why real relationships rule in a digital marketplace, (Free Press) due out in May, is another don’t-miss-it read, if not as amusing. While much of the territory covered by Ed Keller and Brad Fay (CEO and COO of word-of-mouth agency the Keller Fay Group) is familiar, the detailed examples will hammer home the duo’s main point, over and over: All media is social media. Insights about what makes brands talk-worthy, the role of positive and negative word-of-mouth, rethinking your brand’s influential, and the best routes to earned and owned media are straightforward and helpful.

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Finally, we’re late to the party with Brand Rituals: How successful brands bond with customers for life, by Zain Raj (Spyglass Publishing). Raj, late of Euro RSCG and now CEO of Hyper Marketing Inc., starts with the premise that whether we like it or not, the only real rule that applies in marketing today is speed. As the pace of life gets faster, sound bites get smaller, making it clear that old ideas about marketing (we can change the consumer’s mind, for example, or that either advertising or social media can build a brand) simply don’t apply. What does, he maintains, is using the power of habit to create brand rituals that are enduring and beloved. Shepherding your brand from habit to routine to ritual, he says, requires constantly making it interesting and relevant, while working every digital angle available.