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NEO Power by Ross Honeywill & Verity Byth
Have you heard of NEOs? NEO stands for New Economic Order and is the type of person that this book is all about. I have always thought that there were two types of people in the world, those who split people into two groups and those who don’t. Honeywill and Byth belong to the former group, splitting the world into NEOs and traditionalists. NEOs have higher disposable income, spend more and savour the experience rather than the transaction. It is said a NEO would rather go to a small independent bookshop to savour the experience of talking about the book to the shop assistant than buy the book for a smaller price at somewhere like Borders. To my mind, the book doesn’t clearly define what a NEO is to begin with, but still manages to come up with an incredible range of facts and figures about them. In the end, you end up assuming that NEOs are simply people who fit into the category of NEO which is a little too self-referential for me. I have many NEO characteristics, particularly when it comes to travel and technology, however, since I don’t meet all the criteria I am clearly a traditionalist. The book may be handy for marketers who are trying to find a way of defining their market rather than the usual Gen X, Gen Y, age based criteria, and makes an interesting read. It is not a world changing book and if truth be told, I think someone who fitted all of the criteria for NEO would simultaneously tick all the boxes for pretentious wanker.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 9th, 2007 at 1241 and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.