Books about brands and branding come across my desk all the time. All are well-intentioned, most have some wisdom to impart, many are simplistic, and few have the focus or wide enough range of experience to warrant serious attention.
Allen Adamson's "BrandSimple" warrants serious attention.
Adamson is Managing Director of Landor Associates, one of the pioneers in brand development that is part of the Young & Rubicam family. With brand (Lever) and ad agency (Ogilvy & Mather, Ammirati & Puris, DMB&B) experience, and client involvement at Landor alone with Citigroup, Diageo, IBM, P&G and Pfizer, among others, Adamson is in a position to provide an insider's perspective. And he delivers one.
"BrandSimple" combines theory and case study to amply illustrate the book's subtitle: "How the best brands keep it simple and succeed." The anecdotes are fascinating and instructive, and the descriptions of some of the tools available to brand marketers open new ways of evaluating brand performance.
(OK, it's a little self-promoting --others have similar tools to Y&R's BrandAsset Valuator and Landor's Brand Journey mapping. But Adamson gives clear explanations of these and other processes. Understanding them will help any reader approach a brand, or the process of branding, better.)
The highlights are in the details. The almost off-hand observation that, "When a brand has a higher degree of relevance than differentiation, the brand has become a commodity." Common sense to a brand professional? Of course. But how often do we overlook common sense when caught up in the day-to-day crunch?
Adamson also pointedly differentiates between a brand, and branding -- the latter being "how you go about establishing your brand's differentiated meaning in people's minds. . . the transmission of the idea" that defines the brand itself. Branding has to do with logos, packaging, and so on. The BrandSimple concept has to do with clearly defining that differentiated meaning in the first place -- the critical step too many brand managers don't fully appreciate.
Adamson poses series of questions throughout the book that constitute a must-have checklist for any brand marketer. To take them out of context here would make them sound simplistic. Take my word, when used properly, those questions will help you define your brand, your marketing objectives and your success on a whole new plane.
(As published in the e-letter Mayer On Marketing, 11/1/06; copyright 2006 EPM Communications, Inc.)