I'm kind of interested in the meta story around this remote campaign. Assuming 37 signals is doing this book at least partially for money, they're making a play relating to a trend using themselves as the model of what works.
Is the target audience employees who work remote or want to, or is the target market managers who need to understand remote employees?
I suspect they have a yet to be announced product which is targeted to teams working remotely. They are slowly building authority for why and how working remotely works.
This is a very interesting take. If true, the book is not the product. They don't care how well the book sells. They care that you and I know they wrote a book on the topic and so therefore, they are the authority.
I second that interest. I'm guessing their target market is a little of both - employees and managers. They want more people to request to work remotely. As other comments here indicate, they did a good job on that count. They are also promoting a soft management style that would be ok with employees playing with their dogs and gardening during the day.
I'm usually an advocate for this kind of approach, but in my experience they are leaving out the part when you really need to get stuff done and work together, which can be really rough.
At the end when the one guy says "If you have the right tools, the right trust, and the right team, you can work wherever you want..." Those are huge caveats, and 37signals is secure and stable enough to have those in excess, which isn't the case with most businesses.
my intuition says that managers tend to not like remote employees, where as employees tend to like working remotely. or at the very least, having the option
Is the target audience employees who work remote or want to, or is the target market managers who need to understand remote employees?