The Brand Gap
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trademark
A name and/or symbol that indicates a source of goods or services and prevents confusion in the marketplace; a legally protectable form of intellectual property | read Designing Brand Identity, Alina Wheeler
tribal brand
A brand with a cult-like following, such as Harley-Davidson, eBay, or American Idol
turfismo
The tendency of managers to protect their autonomy at the expense of collaboration
TV-Industrial Complex
The dominant system for launching and sustaining national brands during the last half of the 20th century, now weakened by the spread of new media and tribal brands | see tribal brand | read Purple Cow, Seth Godin
USP
The Unique Selling Proposition of a product or service, as championed by advertising executive Rosser Reeves in the 1950s; a type of differentiation | see Differentiation
validation
Customer approval or feedback for a proposed message, concept, or prototype | see Prototype
value proposition
A set of benefits, including functional, emotional, and self-expressive benefits
vicious circle
In brand strategy, a death spiral that leads from a lack of differentiation to lower prices, to smaller profit margins, to fewer available resources, to less innovation, to even less differentiation, and finally to commoditization; the opposite of a virtuous circle
viral marketing
A technique by which social networks are used to spread ideas or messages, through the use of affiliate programs, co-branding, e-mails, and link exchanges on-line, or off-line, through use of word-of-mouth advertising and memes | see Meme read Unleashing the Ideavirus, Seth Godin
virtual agency
A team of specialist firms that work together to build a brand, coined by Susan Rockrise of Intel; also called an IMT or metateam | see Hollywood Model, IMT, Metateam
virtuous circle
The opposite of a vicious circle; a growth spiral that leads from differentiation, to higher prices, to larger profit margins, to more available resources, to more innovation, to further differentiation, and then to a sustainable competitive advantage
vision
The story a leader tells about where an organization is going; the aspirations of a company that drive future growth
zag
A contrarian strategy that yields a competitive advantage; the differentiating idea that drives a charismatic brand | see Charismatic Brand
Recommended Reading
The ideas in THE BRAND GAP are like a group of islands whose foundations extend below the surface of the page: What you see are only the peaks. Yet I hope I’ve roused your sense of adventure enough so you’ll dive deeper into brand and its five disciplines. Here are a few titles I’ve found rewarding and true, together with brief descriptions.
General Branding
BRAND LEADERSHIP, David A. Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler (Free Press, 2000). To be successful, say the authors, a brand must be led from the top. This shift from a tactical approach to a strategic approach requires an equal shift in organizational structure, systems, and culture. The authors prove their point with hundreds of examples from Virgin to Swatch and from Marriot to McDonald’s.
BRAND PORTFOLIO STRATEGY, David A. Aaker (Free Press, 2004). David Aaker has spent more than a decade building a taxonomy of brand theory, helping to define and categorize all the dependencies needed for managing brands. Here he turns his attention from single brands to families of brands, showing how to stretch a brand without breaking it, and how to grow a business without unfocusing it.
BRAND WARFARE, David D’Alessandro (McGrawHill Trade, 2001). The author tells how he brought his branding skills to a job as CEO of John Hancock, transforming the sleepy life insurer into a leading financial services giant. He explains why the brand must always take priority over every other business consideration, becoming a prism through which every decision must be filtered.
EMOTIONAL BRANDING, Marc Gobé (Allworth Press, 2001). Creating emotion, aesthetics, and experience are the province of brand practitioners like Gobé, who uses his company’s portfolio to illustrate and expand upon the work of Aaker and Schmitt, showing how logic and magic are expressed in the practice of design.
MANAGING BRAND EQUITY, David A. Aaker (Free Press, 1991). Aaker fired the first salvo in the brand revolution by proving that names, symbols, and slogans are valuable—and measurable—strategic assets. He followed this book with another called BUILDING STRONG BRANDS (Free Press, 1995), which escalated the conversation by introducing the role of emotion in creating brand power. Aaker’s books provide the homework that underpins modern brand thinking.
MARKETING AESTHETICS, Bernd H. Schmitt and Alex Simonson (Free Press, 1997). Schmitt and Simonson take Aaker’s thesis one step further by showing that aesthetics is what drives emotion. Schmitt forged onward with EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING (Free Press, 1999), in which he focused on the importance of customer experience in building a brand.
SELLING THE INVISIBLE, Harry Beckwith (Warner Books, 1997). A veteran of advertising, Beckwith takes on the toughest branding conundrum, how to market products that people can’t see—otherwise known as services. His follow-up book, THE INVISIBLE TOUCH (Warner Books, 2000), lays out the four keys of modern marketing: price, branding, packaging, and relationships. Those who sell tangible products would do well to master many of the same principles: If you can sell the invisible, the visible is a piece of cake. Both books are delightful and memorable.
Differentiation
BUILT TO LAST, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras (HarperBusiness Essentials, 1994). Brands may not last, but companies can, say Collins and Porras. The key to longevity is to preserve the core and stimulate progress. What’s the core of your business? Your value set? Your promise? This is the place where true differentiation starts, whether your company is a house of brands or a branded house. The authors spent six years on research, which gives the book a certain gravitas.
POSITIONING: THE BATTLE FOR YOUR MIND, Al Ries and Jack Trout (McGraw-Hill Trade, 2000). POSITIONING started as a brochure in the early 1970s, then grew into a book, and has been continuously updated without ever losing its salience. Ries and Trout pioneered the concept of positioning, the Big Bang of differentiation which soon they expanded into a dozen or more books, each viewing the subject from a different angle. If you can grasp the simple truths in this body of work, you’ll understand 90% of what marketing people don’t—the customer decides the brand.
PURPLE COW, Seth Godin (Portfolio, 2003). The author likens a differentiated brand to a purple cow. When driving through the country-side, the first brown cow gets your attention. After ten or twelve brown cows, not so much. Godin proves his point with innumerable examples from today’s brandscape, and shows how any company can stand out from the herd. He also takes aim at advertising as usual, proclaiming the death of the TV-industrial complex. It’s time to mooove on, folks.
Collaboration
NO MORE TEAMS!, Michael Schrage (Currency/Doubleday, 1995). Teamwork has only been given lip service until now, argues Schrage, and for teams to be innovative they need “shared spaces” and collaborative tools. Well written and highly original, NO MORE TEAMS! will bring you closer to your ultimate goal, breakthrough concepts that can revolutionize a business or even a whole industry, and create a sustainable competitive advantage.
ORGANIZING GENIUS, Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman (Perseus Publishing, 1998). An expert on leadership skills, Bennis shows how to unleash the creative potential of teamwork within the organization. A seminal work on the subject, and highly inspirational.
SIX THINKING HATS, Edward de Bono (Little, Brown and Company, 1985). When executives try to brainstorm the future of their organization, the discussion can quickly turn to disagreement. Edward de Bono, acknowledged master of thinking skills, shows how to get the group's best ideas by focusing on one kind of thinking at a time. By organizing the se
ssion into a series of “hats”, i.e., red for emotions, black for devil’s advocate, green for creativity, ideas aren’t shot down before they’re proposed. I’ve used this system with my clients with remarkable results.
UNSTUCK, Keith Yamashita and Sandra Spataro, Ph.D. (Portfolio, 2004). As we move from the century of the individual to the century of the team, the game of business is shifting to a new level of complexity. Frustrated team members (feeling alone, overwhelmed, directionless, battle-torn, worthless, hopeless, exhausted?) can use the exercises in this book to work free of their stuckness. If you like the chart-laden design of The Brand Gap, you’ll love the design of Unstuck.
Innovation
THE ART OF INNOVATION, Tom Kelley et al. (Currency/Doubleday, 2000). Kelley pulls back the curtain at IDEO to reveal the inner workings of today’s premier product design firm. He shows how the firm uses brainstorming and prototyping to design such innovative products as the Palm V, children’s “fat” toothbrushes, and wearable electronics. Cool stuff!
DESIGNING BRAND IDENTITY, Alina Wheeler (Wiley, 2003). This is the new bible for creating the look and feel of a brand. Step by step, touchpoint by touchpoint, Wheeler shows how to turn brand strategy into a perfect customer experience.
EATING THE BIG FISH, Adam Morgan (John Wiley & Sons, 1999). Only one brand can be number one, says Morgan, which means the others have to try harder. He details the traits common to “challenger” brands, which include the courage to be different and the smarts to be innovative. Plenty of real-world examples show that Morgan’s principles are based in practice, not theory.
SERIOUS PLAY, Michael Schrage (Harvard Business School Press, 1999). Schrage isn’t kidding—he seriously wants you to adopt a collaborative model. He says the secret is building quick-and-dirty prototypes, which serve as shared spaces for innovation. He brings the reader into the wild world of the right-brain, where play equals seriousness, and serious players work on fun-loving teams.
A SMILE IN THE MIND, Beryl McAlhone and David Stuart (Phaidon, 1996). If you were to buy only one book on graphic design, this would be it. Designer Stuart and writer McAlhone prove that wit is the soul of innovation, using clever and often profound examples from American and European designers, plus a modest few pieces from Stuart’s own talented firm, The Partners, based in London.
Validation
BOTTOM-UP MARKETING, Al Ries and Jack Trout (Plume, 1989). The concept of building a brand from the bottom up is stunning in its simplicity. The authors advise starting at the customer level to find a tactic that works, then building the tactic into a strategy—instead of the other way around. Next thing you know they’ll advocate turning the org chart upside down. Hmmm—wait a minute…
HITTING THE SWEET SPOT, Lisa Fortini-Campbell (Copy Workshop, 1992). To hit the sweet spot, you need the right ratio of brand insight to consumer insight. Combining theory with practical exercises, the author shows how to take market research from data, to information, to insight, and finally to inspiration.
STATE OF THE ART MARKETING RESEARCH, George Breen, Alan Dutka, and A. B. Blankenship (McGraw-Hill, 1998). This is probably more than you’ll ever want to know about marketing research—unless you’re a professional researcher—including how to do mall interviews, focus groups, and mail studies. But if you need a good reference on the subject (or if you think only on the left side), this is your book.
TRUTH, LIES and ADVERTISING, Jon Steel (John Wiley & Sons, 1998). Steel was an account planner at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, the agency famous for the “Got milk?” campaign and many others. Part researcher, part account executive, part agency creative, and part surrogate customer, he shows how to get inside customers’ minds to discover how they relate to brands, products, and categories.
Cultivation
THE AGENDA, Michael Hammer (Crown Business, 2001). Sustained execution is the key to long-term success, says business guru Hammer, author of RE-ENGINEERING THE CORPORATION. He spells out a nine-point action plan, including “systematize creativity”, “profit from the power of ambiguity”, and “collaborate whenever you can”. While focused more on leadership than on marketing, Hammer’s plan aligns perfectly with the best practices of brand building.
BUILDING THE BRAND-DRIVEN BUSINESS, Scott M. Davis and Michael Dunn (Jossey-Bass, 2002). It’s all about controlling the touchpoints, those places where customers experience the brand. Davis and Dunn tell how to segment those experiences into pre-purchase, during-purchase, and post-purchase, so that everyone in the organization knows their role in building the brand.
LIVING THE BRAND, Nicholas Ind (Kogan Page, 2001). A company’s workforce is its most valuable asset, says Ind, who recommends a participatory approach to branding. He shows how meaning, purpose, and values can be built into the organization to turn every employee into a champion for the brand.
WILL AND VISION, Gerard Tellis and Peter Golder (McGraw-Hill Trade, 2001). To marketers who subscribe to the theory of the first-mover advantage, Tellis and Golder say “Not so fast!” They use an impressive number of case studies, including Gillette, Microsoft, and Xerox, to isolate five key principles needed to build enduring brands: vision of the mass market, managerial persistence, relentless innovation, financial commitment, and asset leverage.
Acknowledgments
A theme of this book is that brands don’t evolve in isolation—they require the talents of many people. Books don’t evolve in isolation, either. THE BRAND GAP is the result of many hours of conversation with people who are impassioned by design and business. The book took two years to research, write, and design; I couldn’t have done it in twenty years without their help.
My litany begins with Michael Nolan of New Riders, who started the ball rolling by believing I could write a book on brand design. He kept the notion alive for a year while I finished other projects, and when I finally got down to work, his support was constant. Thanks also to publisher David Dwyer and associate publisher Stephanie Wall for insisting that the book stay true to its original vision.
A warm nod to Nancy Bernard, my trusted associate and former co-editor of CRITIQUE magazine, who helped me hone my thoughts over the many months they took to formulate. In the end, either of us could have written the book.
David Stuart was instrumental in opening my eyes to the growing importance of creative collaboration. His London design firm, The Partners, has for years practiced what I preach, routinely combining logic and magic for the benefit of their clients and their clients’ customers.
Greg Galle of the brand firm C2, with characteristic brilliance and rigor, lent his thoughts to the book, then combed the text for specious arguments, gratuitous observations, and other nits that annoy the careful reader.
Thanks to Susan Rockrise, who graciously agreed to become the poster girl for brand collaboration while giving me the benefit of her experience as worldwide creative director at Intel. She’s one of the few people who can manage 50 creative firms as if they were one.
My gratitude and admiration to all those who contributed their talents to the making of the book, including Heather McDonald for the design of the interior, Chris Willis for the cover, Chris Chu for his early concepts, and Jeanne Carley for her excellent photography.
The text was improved enormously by the comments of critics, clients, and colleagues who took time to review the prototype. Appreciative bows to David Aaker, Jerry Bertrand, Karen Bollinger, Robin Brandenburg, Bill Cahan, Kerry Foster, Patrick Fricke, Gary Gleason, Richard Grefé, Tom Kelley, Clement Mok, Elizabeth Olsen, David Parks, Jim Peterson, Rob Rodin, Barrie Schwortz, Peter Van Naarden, and my good friend Gordon Mortensen.
Special thanks to my brand-glossary advisory council: Jeremy Bullmore of the advertising organization WPP, Hugh Dubberly of the interactive firm Dubberly Design Office, Tom Kelley of the product design firm IDEO, Davis Masten of Cheskin Research, marketing author Seth Godin, positioning author Al Ries, Susan Rockrise of Intel, collaboration author Michael Schrage, brand-identity author Alina
Wheeler, and the “vision designers” from Stone Yamashita Partners. Outside the council, a number of colleagues from the AIGA Center for Brand Experience helped in herding the right words onto the page.
Of the 220 glossary terms, many have been introduced by authors, in which case I tried to include the titles of their books. You can find some of them listed in the preceding recommended-reading section.
I’ve been extremely lucky in that most of my projects, including this one, have been labors of love. Thanks to my mother Lorna, for revealing the joy in everything and everyone; to my father Gene, for teaching me to try; to my brother Peter, for his steady counsel; to Francele, Marianne, Ellyn, and Carla, for being the best sisters anyone could have; to my daughter Sara, for her generous spirit; and, finally, to Eileen, my amazing wife of 36 years.
About the Author
About the Author
Marty Neumeier is president of Neutron LLC, a San Francisco-based firm specializing in brand collaboration—the “glue” that holds integrated marketing teams together.