NORTHERN PLANNER

The Narcissism of Differences is a book that persuades you that the US and European nations are far more alike than they would like to believe. It's more a case of how different they aren't – most differences are based on illusionary dogma, received wisdom and untrue stereotype.

I think that's a learning for far more than would be jingoists, and the title is one of those that can be nicked for all sorts of stuff.

 It matters to and for normal people, especially in the West, where we wrongly believe we're special – we're not, we're 99.9% (roughly) alike. As other's have said, that should mean planning type people should search for what unites people, not what divides them for lasting effect.

It matters for agencies who, pretty much, do the same thing but claim to be wildly different. What it different is merely what they choose to emphasise, or, more likely, what they choose to believe about themselves that isn't true at all really.

And it's very true of brands. What brand managers tend to love and obsess about is usually a slight variation on what every other brand manager believes leaving whole categories as, largely, a variation on the same thing, creating big fat category rules to break if you can find relevance with proper human truths (see the first point about people).