Levine is riding the current trend in marketing - PR is the new advertising. Levine is a PR person that seems to deal a lot with more the brand of celebrities than the brand of companies. Nonetheless, this book yields a few interesting ideas.

The best part of the book is when Levine uses a fictious company, "Just the Best", to show the traditional process of understanding the market, building a product to serve a need of that market, and then using advertising and PR to build the brand. In this case, Levin shows how there is niche for a ntaional super premium ice cream brand. He discusses the focus of the company and product choices from a brand perspective. Just the Best will focus on few flavors. Later, Levine shows how PR deals with brand expansion and brand extesnion.

This book stumbles in two key areas. Levine frequently quotes people that I would probably not consider experts - the owner of Clean Comedians and a small PR firm in Dallas. Paradoxically, the inclusion of these 'experts' seems to dilute the value of this PR book. Secondly, Levine spends two much time with well known cases like New Coke, Tylenol, and McDonalds.

The book either predates the rise of the industry-expert/blogger or ignores it.

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