Sean D'Souza: 
"Psycho Branding"

Important note: This is an independent and critical book-review - not a sales letter or an ad! 


Format

Ebooks, PDF-format.

Review 

Please note: This review is part of my review of Sean D'Souza's package, "Psycho Tactics".

What is this book about?

There is no doubt about the fact that the concept of Branding is vitally important today. The typical consumer is day in and day out bombarded with thousands of marketing messages. Ads and commercials are everywhere, and most people are becoming increasingly suspicious of all these ads.

So, as I said, in Marketing circles Branding has been a very hot subject for some years now. But Sean D’Souza tries to go one step further than most other books on the subject. What Sean tries to do is to show you, his reader, the psychological factors that lies behind the whole concept of successful Branding.

Sean D’Souza quickly reveals that the game of Branding isn’t necessarily the game of huge Marketing budgets. Actually, a lot of the larger companies loose a lot of money trying to brand themselves and their products or services. Sean’s aim is to show you how to succeed in the branding game without making this mistake.

Says Sean D’Souza…

“You can create a brand and give it a spotlight with almost no money at all. All it requires is a little bit of ingenuity a good brand name, a good product or service and a little touch of magic. …no matter how small your brand is today, you can make it soar with these principles.” (“PsychoBranding, p. 7).

Now, I can’t cover his complete Branding system here. In order to get a grasp of it, you’ll have to buy his book. But let me just share this: Sean D’Souza explains his whole concept of Branding by going through the ingredients of a sentence: Noun, verb, adjective and color.

At first, when I read this, I thought to myself: “Oh no, Sean! Please don’t go back to grammar school. I want something more exiting and interesting than reading about grammar, after having spent so many years studying it.”

But my skepticism soon was put to shame. In my opinion Sean D’Souza’s use of basic grammar to explain his Branding system is a genius pedagogical way of explanation.

What is good in this book?

Sean D’Souza has an engaging writing style. His books seem interactive. And you, the reader, is participating in a dialogue with him.

What could have been better?

I don’t think that Sean D’Souza (in his book, “PsychoTactics”) properly explains the part of his system, which he likens to the importance of the verb in a sentence. He does refer his readers to his book, “The Brain Audit” (also enclosed in this package), and that’s fine. But I still think that this part of his Branding system ought to be better and clearer explained. As this section of “PsychoTactics” stands now, it’s a bit confusing. A few more details and some clearer descriptions would have cleared away any possible misunderstandings.

The same goes for his chapter on using colors to brand your company and products (or services). Sean rightly emphasizes the importance of using the right colors in all your promotions. And he has some valuable and helpful thoughts about using colors when branding something. But I looked in vain for an explanation of how to actually choose the right color for your business. On page 27 of “PsychoTactics” you’re just told to “define your colors here”. That’s it! You’ve just read how important it is to use the right colors. But you’re not told how to actually choose them.

Evaluation

All in all I think that Sean D’Souza has created an ebook that contains several commendable aspects. Step by step he leads you through his system, though – as I’ve mentioned above – some parts of it could be better explained.

But the question that I had when I was through the book is this: Is this the right way to go if you’d like your marketing efforts to become more effective?

I don’t doubt that there’s much truth in the theory of Branding. There really is.

After I wrote the above review a couple of years ago I've gotten the chance to download and read the latest version of this book by Sean D'Souza.

Sean has updated and improved several parts of this book, and there's no doubt that it's become a better book. There's much valuable information in the book, and many marketers will find something in it that'll inspire and help them to become better marketers.

However, I must admit that Sean D’Souza and his particular approach to this subject still doesn’t quite convince me. I’m still not so sure that his guidelines to changing your Marketing material are the missing piece in most marketing promotions.

For example, even though colors are important, I think Sean D’Souza overemphasizes their importance. It is correct that such branding names as Coke Cola, Pepsi and McDonalds have their own particular colors. But if, for instance, we take the particular market I’m targeting, could you tell which colors some of the leading Marketing gurus have? Which colors does Dan S. Kennedy “own”? Or Jay Abraham, Jeff Paul or Jeffrey Lant? And in the Internet Marketing niche, Covey Rudl, Terry Dean, Mark Joyner, Armand Morin, Jim Edwards etc.?

Besides, the number of potential colors, you could choose to use in your business, are limited. After all, there are only so many colors. And what if one or more of your competitors choose to use the same colors as you’re using – before your business (and your color) totally dominates your market, just like it’s the case with Coke Cola, Pepsi and McDonalds.

I simply don’t think that Sean D’Souza’s argumentation holds water here.

It certainly doesn’t mean that using certain colors again and again isn’t a good thing. But there’s nothing new in this. A lot of marketers have emphasized this before. For example, I certainly think it’s a good strategy to give your sales letter a look that makes it easy for your readers to recognize them. I just don’t think that it’s so important as you get the impression of, when you read Sean D’Souza’s ebook. The content of your sales promotions are much, much more important in my opinion.

And in the chapter on “adjectives” (in section 2), Sean D’Souza says:

“Adjective: This one needs a certain uniqueness. Like colour, it has a very strong personality. If your customer perceives a product of your competition to be safe or reliable or quick, you can’t own the same adjective. Find an adjective that suits you and your particular product or service. It should be completely different from the competition.” (“PsychoTactics”, p. 28).

Sometimes – actually very often – it’s rather difficult to find what Sean D’Souza calls an adjective that’s “completely different from the competition.” (The emphasis is mine). But in my experience you don’t need to go that far. You don’t need to position yourself as completely different from all others. Usually it’s just enough to give your business and your products a unique twist – compared to your competitors.

Finally, I have one more complaint. It’s a bit sad, that in such professional looking ebooks like these, the tables of content aren’t “clickable”. By this I mean, the headlines and sub-headlines don’t work like links you can click on if you’d like to go to the corresponding part of each ebook. It certainly improves the navigation of an ebook, published in the PDF-format, if you can do this.

Overall assessment

There are several good and fine points in this ebook by Sean D’Souza. He's updated and improved the book on several points, and it contains some fine and valuable points on marketing. But when that’s said, I must admit that I’m still not convinced that the basic premises are just as decisive for the success of your business, as Sean D’Souza tries to give you the impression of.

In my opinion, based on my own experience - and that of countless other successful marketers – Direct Response Marketing is the way to go if you’d like to succeed as a small business. According to the proven principles behind Direct Response Marketing, such factors as design and images are important / but only so far as they attract the attention of your readers to the words in your sales promotions. It’s the words you use that make the real difference. No matter how nice your design, your fonts, your illustrations and your images look like, if the words you use doesn’t lead your potential customers toward taking an action (that you want them to take), it won’t do your business much good – especially if you are the owner of a small business with a limited budget.

Again, in my opinion there are many useful points in this ebook, but it 'smells' too much of “Madison Avenue Marketing”, the kind of image Marketing that tries to move other people to become your customers through repeated exposures which primarily “speak to the sub-conscious mind”. A much better – and less risky - way to go is to use Direct Response Marketing, in my humble opinion.

Buying information 

Web site

http://www.psychotactics.com

Postal address

Sean D'Souza
PO Box 36461, 
Northcote, Auckland, 
New Zealand

E-mail

sean@psychotactics.com

Phone

Phone: +64 (9) 449 0009
Mobile: +64 (21)236 1415