Paul Polak

ELISE launched Paul Polak's book, Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail (Berrett-Koehler Publishers) in February 2008 and helped him start a design revolution.
We managed the brand positioning, media kit and Web site design, and executed a national public relations campaign that achieved 30 million media impressions during the month the  book was published. Paul is now in demand as a speaker on poverty alleviation, and his book is a guide for collegiate engineering and design courses. He continues to draw attention worldwide and has a tremendous on-line presence with several thousand fans and followers.

Approach

When ELISE first met Paul Polak in 2007, he was relatively unknown and a first-time author. ELISE focused on Polak’s background as a psychiatrist—and his ability to understand the context in which people live and the constraints they face—in order to illustrate how this skill helped him relate to thousands of poor farmers around the globe. ELISE proved—through case studies and figures—that even though he lacked formal training in economics, he helped lift small-acreage farmers out of poverty by focusing on high-value, labor-intensive crops and as a result, increased their income.

ELISE recommended that Berrett-Koehler categorize the book as "current affairs/economics" because of Paul's unique perspective and appeal to a general audience. And, positioning Out of Poverty as a "first-person account of eradicating poverty" allowed us to illuminate Paul as a universal figure whose hopeful approach to tackling poverty could appeal to anyone striving to improve their lives.

Results

Polak’s objective was to start a "Design Revolution." ELISE helped him accomplish this through favorable reviews and book endorsements in The Economist; The International Herald Tribune; Stanford Social Innovation Review; and National Public Radio's "Fresh Air," among others. We also managed a book launch in his hometown of Denver, and C-SPAN's Book TV filmed the event.

As a result of our work, Out of Poverty ranked ahead of Jeffrey Sachs' The End of Poverty in the "business category" on Amazon.com. Following the NPR interview, the book ranked #2 in "current affairs." And, BusinessWeek named it one of the best Innovation Books of 2008. Most recently The Atlantic listed Polak as a "Brave Thinker," among Steve Jobs, President Barack Obama and others.

ELISE’s work with Paul Polak didn’t simply launch a book; we created a brand.