Why Blog? and Skyping with Rob Walker

Why blog?  Because it lets you connect with people who share your interests.

Last Summer (Summer 08) I emailed Rob Walker to say thanks for writing such a good book and to let him know that I was excited to use Buying In in my classes (Fall 08).

Rob Walker emailed me back to say thanks and to let me and my students know about his blog murketing.com (for updates and additional info).  I subscribed to murketing.com’s rss feed, and have been able to interact with Rob Walker ever since.  When Rob announced he was creating a facebook page for his Consumed column in NYT Magazine I became a fan and got to intereact with him and others who are facebook fans of Consumed.  Rob also offered to do a Skype visit with my Consumer Behavior class, which went great.  We Skyped again yesterday with my Introduction to Marketing class after reading/discussing Buying In:

Are there any other Consumer Behavior/Marketing/Consumption authors who offer this kind of interactivity and who have great books?  I like to use books by Gladwell, Rushkoff, Holt, and Schor in my marketing classes, but i don’t think these authors offer the same level of interactivity that Rob Walker offers.

So, next semester I’ll be using two books for my Introduction to Marketing classes at Sonoma State University:

1) What is Marketing? By Alvin J. Silk–just to make sure I cover the @#$%ing 4 P’s and to make sure students learn what Rick Wagoner and George W. Bush were taught in their MBA classes at Harvard.

2) Buying In by Rob Walker–hopefully murketing.com and the NYT Consumed column are still going strong!