Appropriately Marc Gobé, a brand image creator and head of Desgrippes Gobé, saw our story about Daniel Pink's presentation at the ABA's Winter Institute (Shelf Awareness, February 5, 2007) and wanted to add to the discussion about how booksellers can better present themselves and the books they sell.

Gobé has explored issues of design and retail and reaching customers in Emotional Branding and Citizen Brand. His brand-new book, Brandjam: Humanizing Brands Through Emotional Design (Allworth Press, $24.95, 9781581154689/1581154682), continues the theme of explaining "how design puts the face on the brand and creates an irresistible message that connects buyers to the product in a visceral way."

A native of France who lives in New York City, Gobé maintains that retail and brand experiences tend to be felt by customers either in the head, heart or gut. Most bookstores, he said, offer a head experience--focusing on having a cool, logical selection of titles, with "clean shelves and lots of choices . . . an academic, intellectual approach," often designed for people who know already what they want to buy. Booksellers tend to see and present books in a "narrow, business-like way." He finds this counterintuitive because unlike most other products, "books have personalities, they're exciting, they're sulphurous, they're dangerous. Books have always been attached with emotions and are the most emotionally transforming things."

Other more mundane products are presented, he argued, with the kind of emotion that are intrinsic to books. For example, Victoria's Secret is essentially a store that sells bras and panties, he said, but the company "makes shopping in it into something sensual and clearly enticing. They recognize that women want to enjoy their own femininity and have a sense of freedom and express their own sexuality."

Bookstores should "crank up the emotional interaction between people and the product," he went on. "Books can be absolutely essential in defining a customer, in stimulating them, driving them to new ideas, expressing who they are. Books define people the way clothes and fragrances and shoes do." (And bras and panties, too.)

Bookstores could easily offer a heart or gut experience, he went on. As an example of the heart experience in book retail, he described his favorite bookstore, a small shop in Paris on the Boulevard Saint-Germain that's "always crowded" and popular among intellectuals. It has "the best selection" of philosophy, economics and "some of the more brainy types of titles," Gobé said. "It's a place where I find topics and books that are totally amazing." Recently he visited and discovered a book about the industrial revolution that "I read and was so enthusiastic about," whose subject he had no interest in before seeing the book. "My sense is if I go there, I will find a book I can't find anywhere else" and a style of book that "will stimulate my mind. I have never been there and not bought something."

By contrast, a gut experience is full and stimulating, "more a lifestyle" experience. One example would be a combination bookstore/café/movie theater, as in some small towns, or if Starbucks were to add a "really interesting" little bookstore in its cafes. "One could go there, buy a book, have a coffee, listen to music and have a total experience," Gobé said.

Many chain stores (he has consulted with Barnes & Noble on a concept store) "have the right formulas," and do well in offering a wide range of books and allowing customers "to get a bunch of books, a sandwich, coffee and listen to a speaker," Gobé said. But the chains "fall short on not knowing how to package offerings according to dominant social or lifestyle themes. They are still very regimented in the way they present books."

Smaller bookstores, he said, can be competitive and "have an opportunity to be more exclusive in their point of view in contrast to the massive offerings of Barnes & Noble. They can compete with their personal vision and understanding of what's really exciting and stimulating in literature and books."

Most people like to read, he continued, but they are "faced with massive amounts of offerings. They need editors, like fashion or food editors. Booksellers should say that out of all the stuff being published, we stand for these 30 books." The store and displays and environment should tell customers, "What you get shopping with us is a certain vision of what's interesting and powerful that you should know about. Even if the ideas are sometimes conflicting, they are relevant." Not surprisingly, he is a big fan of staff recommendations.

A concrete first step for any bookstore to take is "to manage windows as an experience," as Gobé put it. "Take several books on the same theme and make a huge statement about those books. Make it a display that says this is something everybody has to know about. Having a single focus on big ideas will drive people into the store."

Inside the store, it's "really important to break down shelves and instead of presenting books by categories, find themes that are relevant to people's lives."  For example, the Harry Potter phenomenon is, Gobé said, part of "a return to the era of mystery" and gothic. As a result, a suitable display around Potter time should be "all gothic. The front of the store should be gothic." The approach should resemble that of fashion stores, which, when teal is in vogue, make "the first 15 feet of the store teal."

Overall stores should "bring a sense of home and warmth and personal interaction that makes you linger in the store, sit, have coffee, meet with some friends, listen to a speaker," Gobé said. Then the store becomes more than "a retail environment" and like "a social rendezvous." He added that if a customer "can feel and touch and be stimulated by an environment, by a design," a retailer has achieved his goal.--John Mutter