Once in a while a book comes along which ties up a-lot of unanswered questions you’ve been thinking about.
Ryan Holiday’s new book has been just that for me.
If you don’t know Ryan Holiday is the Director of Marketing for American Apparel, and has done work for authors including Tucker Max and Tim Ferriss. He wrote the bestseller Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, where he outlines how he got free national press for his clients.
In his new book Ryan goes about explaining from his experience why traditional marketing is dead, even in his current capacity as Director of Marketing for American Apparel, and what is here to replace it: Growth Hacking.
He then goes on to explain what Growth Hacking is, and how it’s done.
If your reading this I presume you already know what Growth Hacking is, but here’s a Wikipedia entry on it if your still curious.
The last story is worth the £1.99 in its own right. The 4 Hour Chef was banned from all boycotted by bookstores nationwide. In 60 days, Ryan using Growth Hacking principles was able to make the book an astounding success on launch, making it on the New York’s Bestseller’s list and being No 1 on the Wall Street Journal’s Bestseller’s List.
Why else is this book awesome?
It’s short. It took me 40 minutes to read.
It’s cheap, Ryan specifically requested Penguin Publishers to price it at the $2.99 price range (£1.99 in the UK).
It’s awesome. Ryan “gets it”. As someone who just wasted 6 weeks of his life doing a marketing internship at a start-up, the 1st lesson of the book strikes home for me. The first stage of Growth Hacking is building a remarkable product (an echo of Seth Godin’s Purple Cow).
Interested? Check out Ryan’s blog post on his new book.