Book review: BrandSimple

"BrandSimple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed" by Allen Adamson is a refreshingly easy read that boils the essence of brands and branding down to, well, their simplest but most important basics. Anyone involved in business management of any kind should read this book.

Adamson reminds us throughout the book that a brand is a very different thing than branding and that marketers cannot be great at branding without first creating a great brand.

The best brands are different. They promise something different and unique and deliver on that promise every time. They also find a way to simplify their brand message so that just about everyone instantly "gets it" and that the "it" resonates and seems obvious after the fact. Getting to that simplicity can require a lot of hard work and thinking, but making it seem so simple, obvious and intuitive is the key.

As Managing Director of Landor Associates, Allen Adamson peppers the book with real-world examples from his work at Landor and from his previous positions. His case studies show how the best brands work tirelessly to emerge with a simple promise and a simple message that is easily communicated in just a few words.

The real examples are brief yet clearly show the challenges and ultimate solutions from brands like Compaq, Visa, Apple, Aquafina, Baby Einstein, BlackBerry, JetBlue, Timberland, Pixar and many more. He uses these brands to show that often a simple insight that makes your product different is the real power in building a great brand -- as long as that difference is important and relevant to your potential customers.

The book is written at an easy reading level so that any business manager will be able to readily breeze through it without tons of technical branding terminology and grasp the important concepts. This in turn will inspire them to reevaluate and transform their own brands. The book is straight-forward, simple and highly insightful and useful.


On my "Professional Marketer Investment Scale";
($-Poor investment, $$$$$-Great investment)

Rating: $$$$$

Bud goes to InBev

Anheuser-Busch and its flagship brand, Budweiser, have been bought by Belgian brewer, InBev. Not only does this leave us to wonder if a truly American beer brand will play well globally, but it reminds us that distribution (or place) is one of the important "P's" of marketing.

Will InBev be successful getting Bud to be a broader-reaching global brand? Will the purchase by a foreign company hurt Bud's appeal in the U.S.? Will the synergistic savings on the supply and manufacturing side realized by InBev now more than justify the purchase?

Only time will tell, of course, but it will be interesting to watch what effect this has on the A-B and Bud brands.

The question is, will the Budweiser brand still have relevance as a non-U.S. brand or has its essence been fundamentally changed forever?

Can you build a brand without advertising?

You bet you can.

In fact, if a brand is powerful, it might not need advertising at all.

Look at what Smart Car is doing.

http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/esearch/e3i8f0b924c729e72f62fd5acfbb4526b39.

and check out this quote from the article:

"The only U.S. presence [the car] might have is on our Web site," said Dave Schembri, president of Smart USA, Bloomfield Hills, Mich., the exclusive distributor of the Smart Car in North America and Puerto Rico. "But we aren't advertising. We don't need to."

More on High Reach Influencer Value and other marketing tactics

I've just released more information about high reach influencers in my new report, "5 Secret Marketing Tactics That Will Increase Your Revenue." The report is free for the asking.

Please let me know what you think of the report!

Your customer might not be king

High Reach Influencers (HRI's) are people who convince many others to purchase from you. High Reach Influencers often engage in word-of-mouth marketing and lead others to purchase products or services based on their personal recommendations. These people have the personal power to influence many others.

HRI’s might bring more new customers to you who then purchase far more than the HRI’s purchase themselves. In fact, HRI’s might not even purchase anything at all from you themselves. Because they might not currently be your customers, HRI's can often be overlooked by companies calculating customer lifetime value (CLV) or customer referral value (CRV).

HRI’s might be influential bloggers who comment on your brand as a result of hearing a rumor about you. These HRI’s might be industry reporters or trade editors. These HRI’s could be people who want to talk about your brand to others for a myriad of reasons other than the fact that they are your customers and they're either very happy or very disappointed with their experience with your brand.

Don't forget these high reach influencers when determining how to best build your brand. Quantify them as much as possible and seek ways to communicate with them and influence them.

Don't assume your customers are the only ones who refer others to you. By all means, don't assume that your customers are the only ones who matter because your best customers in terms of individual purchasing habits might pale in comparison to others who send much more business your way.

How to Build Your Reputation Online

Here is some great advice in the form of an interview on establishing and building your reputation online using some of the newer social media tools.

My recent break from blogging

Oh, did I not mention a conference that I would be attending in Cancun?

I'm back now and will start thinking about marketing again...although the entire concept of Cancun was obviously conceived with nothing but tourists in mind in order to find a way to part them from their money. Cancun is completely unlike the rest of Mexico and is entirely built for tourism. As branding goes, they've done a good job catering to their target market.

In order to further connect this trip to marketing and branding, I also snapped this second picture outside of a small convenience shop in Mexico.



Bimbo Bakeries was founded in Mexico City in 1945 and brought packaged, sliced bread to the Mexican market. Does this brand name hold up across countries and cultures?

..and this all begs the question, Is Cancun the best thing to happen in Mexico since sliced bread?

Great marketing quote...

"Authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make. It is the art of identifying and understanding customer needs and creating solutions that deliver satisfaction to the customers, profits to the producers and benefits for the stakeholders."

- Philip Kotler

Meaningful Marketing lesson

I'm working my way through a new book (to me), "Meaningful Marketing". This book is already looking like one of the best pragmatic marketing books I've read in recent years even though I'm only on page 50. I already uncovered a gem that I must share with you that goes to the heart of branding.

"To get customers to listen, you must give them a dramatic reason. A study of over 901 marketing messages for new products found that when the sales messages specifically stated the product's point of difference, those brands were 52% more likely to survive for 5 years or more than those that were less overt."

Great lesson. Create a point of singular distinction and communicate it clearly.

Amen.

The awareness question revisited

Well, I recently got "the question" again. Yet another reader of my e-book, "How to Build and Manage Your Brand (in sickness and in health)" emailed me a question about my stance on brand awareness. I get some iteration of this question every few months.

The question?

Always some variation of,

"I'm very interested to know what's behind your statement, 'Brand awareness is not everything. Brand awareness is vitally important for all brands but high brand awareness without an understanding of what sets you apart from the competition does you virtually no good. Many marketers experience confusion on this point.'"

What do I mean?

Brand awareness is vitally important for all brands but high brand awareness without an understanding of what sets you apart from the competition does you no good in-and-of itself.

Just because somebody is aware of your brand does not mean they understand why it is unique or why they should believe it represents superior value. Heck, there are a lot of brands with high awareness but also high notoriety. This is not desirable.

It is only once people understand what is different and unique about your brand that they can start to consider it as the superior choice in its category and start to develop brand preference toward it. Awareness means they are simply aware. Strategically aware means they are aware and understand what makes your brand different from every other one in the category...and just because they understand the differences doesn't necessarily mean those differences are favorable in their eyes.

Positive strategic awareness occurs when not only does the person recognize your brand, but they also understand the distinctive qualities that make it better in their eyes than the competition. This leads to brand preference.

Simply creating awareness for your brand is not even half the battle. Give me enough money for advertising and I can raise awareness for just about any brand...but that doesn't mean I'll drive any sales for it.

So remember, powerhouse, sales-driving branding is all about creating a point of singular distinction, creating positive strategic awareness and building brand preference in the mind of the target market.

SEE ALSO:
http://www.dolakblog.com/2006/08/brand-awareness-whats-deal.html