There was a joke about Richard Addam’s classic novel about a community of rabbits that went thus: WATERSHIP DOWN ~ YOU’VE READ THE BOOK! YOU’VE SEEN THE MOVIE! YOU’VE EVEN HUMMED THE TUNE! NOW EAT THE STEW! And that seems to be the story of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.
What started out as a wonderful book, Freakonomics, now seems to have grown into a brand to be monetized. A “media franchise”, not very different from Mickey Mouse, Harry Potter or – let’s face it – Friday the 13th.
Levitt is an award-winning Chicago economist, who once happened to be interviewed by journalist Dubner. The two of them discovered a shared chemistry, and decided to collaborate on a book which would marry the economics insights of the former and the writing smarts of the latter. It turned out to be the proverbial marriage-made-in-heaven and the result was the world’s first ever book which caused you use the words “economics” and “delightful” in the same sentence.
Fortuitously, the book also got the marketing it deserved: according to literary industry legend, a young marketing exec had the brainwave of replacing the conventional marketing methodologies with sending out manuscripts of the book to selected bloggers to review. Meanwhile, at the last minute their editor allegedly replaced the book’s original title with the snappy Freakonomics. The coming together of all these factors resulted in a blockbuster that went on to sell 4 million copies.
So now, the spin-offs
A couple of years later Levitt and Dubner decided to write a sequel. That was Superfreakonomics, its clunky title being indicative of the slightly forced effort of its content. As a sequel it was not too bad, but one was left with the distinct sense that the authors had used up their best material in their first book.
But it was when their third book came along that things really started to go downhill. Whereas the first two books were about how, in the hands of a talented economist, data can lead to fascinating stories of how the world is not necessarily what it appears to be, by now the authors had evidently run out of material altogether.
Hence Think Like A Freak purported to be a handbook on how to look at the world like a freakonomist. Which sounds promising but, in fact, turned out to be just another humdrum think-out-of-the-box job. (“Don’t assume that you know the answer’? “Try to look at the world through the eyes of a child”? “Give people meaningful incentives to do what you want them to”? Oh, come on, guys, we already know that.)
Meanwhile, along the way, we also got a Freakonomics blog, a Freakonomics newspaper column, a Freakonomics radio programme, a Freakonomics movie (no kidding!), even a Freakonomics consultancy. In short, everything short of a Freakonomics pavilion at Disneyworld.
All of this led to what, as Professor Narayanan taught us in first year economics class, is called Diminishing Marginal Utility. So, naturally, one assumed that the supply of these outputs must stop, before Negative Marginal Utility actually sets in.
But no!
When To Rob a Bank
Now there’s a new book from Levitt and Dubner, titled When To Rob a Bank. It turns out to be a selection of bits and pieces that originally appeared in the Freakonomics blog, which have now been tweaked, polished, warmed up and served in book form.
It touches upon topics ranging from (obviously) the best day of the week to rob a bank to how long it takes to perfect a golf swing, from why flight attendants don’t get tips to why it makes sense to bring politicians’ salaries in line with corporate salaries (my own take on which being: that might work in Singapore or Mexico, as you say, but it’s completely meaningless in India, where a a top-notch CEO makes, let’s say Rs 3 crore a year, while an ordinary, semi-literate state-level neta can quite easily make Rs 100 crore during his 5-year term).
The experience of When To Rob a Bank is thus vaguely reminiscent of reading a Malcolm Gladwell book, but not as satisfying. Meanwhile, one gets the feeling that Levitt withdrew to the cloisters of Chicago University long ago to teach economics, leaving Dubner to run the business. And the business model seems to be not very different from the superbly evolved Walt Disney model, where each movie is deemed to be a property, whose purpose is to generate a multiplicity of revenue streams, from sequels, videogames, merchandise, promos, you-name-it (“Buy 2 Big Macs and get a Pirates of the Carribbean game absolutely FREE!”)
So what’s next? A Freakonomics restaurant guide? A Freakonomics cookbook? A Freakonomics guide to time management? Freakonomics branded stationery and executive diaries? Freakonomics branded luggage? The way things are going, these seem to be real possibilities.
After all, when a book or a movie grows to become a brand, the question becomes, “In how many different ways can we monetise this asset?” Let’s not forget, there’s a movie actually titled Friday the 13th, Part XXII.
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What started out as a wonderful book, Freakonomics, now seems to have grown into a brand to be monetized. A “media franchise”, not very different from Mickey Mouse, Harry Potter or – let’s face it – Friday the 13th.
Levitt is an award-winning Chicago economist, who once happened to be interviewed by journalist Dubner. The two of them discovered a shared chemistry, and decided to collaborate on a book which would marry the economics insights of the former and the writing smarts of the latter. It turned out to be the proverbial marriage-made-in-heaven and the result was the world’s first ever book which caused you use the words “economics” and “delightful” in the same sentence.
Fortuitously, the book also got the marketing it deserved: according to literary industry legend, a young marketing exec had the brainwave of replacing the conventional marketing methodologies with sending out manuscripts of the book to selected bloggers to review. Meanwhile, at the last minute their editor allegedly replaced the book’s original title with the snappy Freakonomics. The coming together of all these factors resulted in a blockbuster that went on to sell 4 million copies.
So now, the spin-offs
A couple of years later Levitt and Dubner decided to write a sequel. That was Superfreakonomics, its clunky title being indicative of the slightly forced effort of its content. As a sequel it was not too bad, but one was left with the distinct sense that the authors had used up their best material in their first book.
But it was when their third book came along that things really started to go downhill. Whereas the first two books were about how, in the hands of a talented economist, data can lead to fascinating stories of how the world is not necessarily what it appears to be, by now the authors had evidently run out of material altogether.
Hence Think Like A Freak purported to be a handbook on how to look at the world like a freakonomist. Which sounds promising but, in fact, turned out to be just another humdrum think-out-of-the-box job. (“Don’t assume that you know the answer’? “Try to look at the world through the eyes of a child”? “Give people meaningful incentives to do what you want them to”? Oh, come on, guys, we already know that.)
Meanwhile, along the way, we also got a Freakonomics blog, a Freakonomics newspaper column, a Freakonomics radio programme, a Freakonomics movie (no kidding!), even a Freakonomics consultancy. In short, everything short of a Freakonomics pavilion at Disneyworld.
All of this led to what, as Professor Narayanan taught us in first year economics class, is called Diminishing Marginal Utility. So, naturally, one assumed that the supply of these outputs must stop, before Negative Marginal Utility actually sets in.
But no!
When To Rob a Bank
Now there’s a new book from Levitt and Dubner, titled When To Rob a Bank. It turns out to be a selection of bits and pieces that originally appeared in the Freakonomics blog, which have now been tweaked, polished, warmed up and served in book form.
It touches upon topics ranging from (obviously) the best day of the week to rob a bank to how long it takes to perfect a golf swing, from why flight attendants don’t get tips to why it makes sense to bring politicians’ salaries in line with corporate salaries (my own take on which being: that might work in Singapore or Mexico, as you say, but it’s completely meaningless in India, where a a top-notch CEO makes, let’s say Rs 3 crore a year, while an ordinary, semi-literate state-level neta can quite easily make Rs 100 crore during his 5-year term).
The experience of When To Rob a Bank is thus vaguely reminiscent of reading a Malcolm Gladwell book, but not as satisfying. Meanwhile, one gets the feeling that Levitt withdrew to the cloisters of Chicago University long ago to teach economics, leaving Dubner to run the business. And the business model seems to be not very different from the superbly evolved Walt Disney model, where each movie is deemed to be a property, whose purpose is to generate a multiplicity of revenue streams, from sequels, videogames, merchandise, promos, you-name-it (“Buy 2 Big Macs and get a Pirates of the Carribbean game absolutely FREE!”)
So what’s next? A Freakonomics restaurant guide? A Freakonomics cookbook? A Freakonomics guide to time management? Freakonomics branded stationery and executive diaries? Freakonomics branded luggage? The way things are going, these seem to be real possibilities.
After all, when a book or a movie grows to become a brand, the question becomes, “In how many different ways can we monetise this asset?” Let’s not forget, there’s a movie actually titled Friday the 13th, Part XXII.
