Press Release: Shift by Peter Arnell
“Peter Arnell’s genius is that he creates a total 360-degree world. Once you enter into this fantastical place with him, you can’t help but emerge changed for the better.” — Frank Gehry, Pritzker Prize-winning architect
In a new book, Peter Arnell draws on nearly three decades of branding and marketing expertise to outline the concept of Shift, a strategy built on the transformational tactics used by famous brands to effect sustainable change in everything from your career to your health.
SHIFT
how to reinvent your business, your career and your personal brand
by Peter Arnell
Change is hard. Whether the goal is to reboot your career, update your business, or lose 10, 20 or 256 pounds. But too often trying to make a radical, sudden change in your life turns out to be unsustainable. In SHIFT: How to Reinvent Your Business, Your Career, and Your Personal Brand (Broadway Books; June 15, 2010; $23.00), Peter Arnell, one of the world’s foremost branding and design experts, says little changes can make a big difference.
Inspired by the realization that he was a 400-pound plus man in what should have been a 150-pound body, Arnell created the concept of shift—using the same strategies he’s been applying to such famous brands as Donna Karan, Home Depot, and Samsung—to subsequently lose 256 pounds. But this is not a diet book. It’s a book about how each of us can tranform our lives based on strategies and tactics Arnell has applied throughout his career.
In business, brands are recreated and revitalized everyday. But in a world obsessed with the quick fix, the overnight success, shift offers a way by which we can make major changes in our personal life or career that can be indefinitely sustained. Arnell shows us how to make the mindset adjustments to create the “new and improved” you!
Among the insights Arnell outlines in Shift:
Go Helium: Going helium means setting the bar absurdly high. When Arnell first resolved to lose the weight, he consulted with Dr. Louis Aronne, an internationally recognized expert on obesity, who told Arnell that if he could drop from 408 pounds down to 230 pounds, he could count on living out his natural life span. That was a nice goal, but it wasn’t enough for Arnell.
He asked what would be the ideal goal… if all the barriers were broken and there were no limitations. That’s how he set the bar at 150 pounds, and went about achieving it. Going helium makes achieving your goals doable.
Unimaginable success doesn’t seem unimaginable any more.
Create a Fan Club: For Arnell, creating a fan club was the way to keep himself on track. For years, he had been disappointing people. Clients gave up on having healthy food at meetings because it seemed invisible to him. He’d let his friends down so often that they didn’t bother to ask how his alleged diet of the moment was going. He knew he needed to build a trip-wire of consequences to his mission if he was going to succeed. So he created the Peter Arnell fan club to encourage and support his efforts—broadcasting via email his first early success of dropping below 400 to the many other successes that followed.
Change is a two-way exchange. It is important that any milestones you achieve be recognized by other people as much as by yourself. If you broadcast your goals and watershed moments to an extended group of friends and other well-wishers, you quickly reach a point of no return.
Shock and Awe: When you make a great change in your life, you want to make of point of showcasing that success to the world around you—to your colleagues, associates, clients, friends, you want to show them proof that you’re making big leaps forward, not baby steps that can be reversed in an instant. When Arnell began losing pounds and inches and starting feeling better about himself, his friend Martha Stewart advised him to tailor his clothes as he lost weight, and to avoid getting new clothes for as long as possible.
Why? Because everyone would be amazed when he made the switch from his elastic-waisted khaki pants and un-tucked white shirts, to an all-new wardrobe of dapper, tailored suits. The day he got the call from his tailor that if his pants were taken in any further the pockets would touch in the seat, Arnell bought new clothes and unveiled his new look. And as predicted, everyone was wowed by his weightloss.
Through innovative insights and personal stories of his own transformation weaved together with illuminating stories of how he created transformative change for brands such as Reebok and Pepsi, in Shift Arnell shares his unique vision of how all of us can rebrand and transform our lives, both personally and professionally.
For more information, please visit: www.shiftbyarnell.com.
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About the Author
PETER ARNELL, founder of Arnell, is one of the foremost branding and design experts in the world. Among the companies he and his team have worked with are DKNY, Samsung, Chanel, Reebok, Mars, Pepsi, Home Depot, GNC, De Tomaso, Fendi, Mikimoto, Special Olympics, and Con Edison. He and his family live in Westchester County, New York.
SHIFT by Peter Arnell; June 15, 2010; Broadway Books; ISBN: 978-0-385-52627-2; Hardcover, 208 pages; Price: $23.00