A Little Background
Words That Work is a fairly provocative new political/marketing book. The author, Dr. Frank Luntz, is best known for his political work with Republicans over the past 15 years. However, his firm also has experience with a number of Fortune 500 companies.
Given Dr. Luntz’ Republican pedigree, it’s not surprising that the reviewers on Amazon.com were divided in their opinions about Words That Work. One claimed “…the book as a whole truly reads more like a manual for right-wing positioning.” But in contrast, 51 of the 77 Amazon.com customer reviews gave Words That Work four or five stars (on a five star scale).
On the back cover, Al Franken was quoted with an excellent back-handed compliment for Dr. Luntz:
“Language is like music. Unfortunately, the Republicans have a Paul McCartney in the person of Frank Luntz. Somehow, we Democrats got stuck with Yoko Ono.”
And among other things, the publisher claims that:
“…Dr. Luntz not only raises the curtain on the craft of effective language, but also offers priceless insight on how to find and use the right words to get what you want out of life.”
All of this told us Words That Work would be an interesting, and hopefully a useful business book. Since one of the core offerings of OG is marketing communication effectiveness, we are particularly interested in what Dr. Luntz does, and how he does it, and anything new we could learn for the benefit of our clients.
