The Power of Belonging

The book is rich with useful information both for marketing professionals and for people who are simply interested in how marketing works. In that regard, Baaghil provides a useful overview of everything you need to know about marketing, which for Baaghil means finding a way to invite your audience to belong to the brand, and vice versa.

Budding entrepreneurs in the early stages of founding a business would be particularly well-served to read Baaghil's advice concerning brands, since he makes a passionate argument that branding starts at the business conception stage. Business owners who don't think about their brands from the beginning, says Baaghil, are still building a brand perception-they're just building an unplanned, "wild" brand perception. By the time the new entrepreneur is ready to release a product, if he or she is thinking of branding merely as colors and a logo, it may be too late.

One of the most interesting and useful parts of the book is Baaghil's ongoing engagement with the problems of business and marketing specifically with regard to the Middle East and the developing world. He speaks warmly yet firmly to Middle Eastern CEOs, providing them with needful advice that comes from his clear vision of how far there is to go, but more importantly, how great the possibilities are for business and culture in the region.