• Hi, I’m Brad Abare

  I'm a make-it-happen guy working with big idea people. I design teams and orchestrate strategy so that great ideas I believe in get done.
  
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The last thing I’d expect to see from ad agency wonder boy Alex Bogusky, of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, is a dieting book. Bogusky and crew are responsible for some of the most notable ad campaigns for brands like Coca-Cola, IKEA, Microsoft and Burger King. Why would he write a book talking about why diets don’t work and that his 9-Inch “diet” is the only real path and plan for success?

Fortunately, The 9-Inch “Diet”: Exposing the Big Conspiracy in America is not your typical diet book. It’s 135 pages are easy-to-read with minimal text, lots of graphics and plenty of humor. It took me an hour to digest.

With colorful illustrations and plenty of sidebar fodder, Alex tells the story of America’s love affair with BIG, and how our plate size is directly responsible for our pant size. The idea and urgency for the book hit him when he bought a quaint 1940s lake house that had never been updated. “The whole place was original, including the kitchen.” After stocking up on all the basic things needed for a kitchen, they quickly learned that the plates would not fit in the cupboards. “What kind of idiot builds a cupboard that doesn’t hold a normal plate?”

Alex’s epiphany was that “there is no idiot.” “What had happened was that ‘normal’ must have changed in the 60 years since that cupboard was built.” Here’s an excerpt that captures a taste of what 9-Inch is about:

Now, before you start bashing McDonald’s you should know that it actually increased its portions reluctantly. The company’s founder, Ray Kroc, didn’t like the image of lowbrow, cheap food in huge portions. If people wanted more French fries, he would say, “They can buy two bags.” Ray made a lot of sense, and we can only wish today he had won that argument back then. But price competition had become so fierce that the only way to keep profits up was to offer bigger and bigger portions. Burger King, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell were all cutting their prices, selling more food, and making bigger profits while doing so. After all, it costs pennies to increase the size of a portion, but customers will pay at least a quarter more to buy it. Those quarters add up. By 1988, McDonald’s had introduced a 32-ounce “super-size” soda and “super-size” fries. To put that in perspective, a classic bottle of Coke is 6.5 ounces. So, we can now order one cup that contains five 1970 Coca-Cola portions. If you saw somebody with a burger and five bottles of Coke you might think it a bit odd, even today. But the big cup makes it “normal.”

This book is perfect for the coffee table. It’s loaded with eye candy and plenty of conversation-starters about how to get America eating off 9-inch plates. Come to think of it, it’s exactly the kind of book you’d expect from an ad agency wonder boy like Alex.

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