Branding That Means Business

A revelatory guide on how to build, sustain and grow a brand. A brand is either beloved, or it’s noise. We live in a fast-paced world of immediate gratification where consumers can listen to any song, watch any movie, or read any article, with the touch of a few buttons. They are peppered with hyper-personalized targeting for products that can be ordered seamlessly and arrive within hours. And if your brand isn’t the first to come to mind, they’ll click that button and it’ll be delivered by someone else. So how do you make sure your brand connects with consumers? Branding that Means Business draws from the authors’ experience and business literature as well as psychology, sociology, and even anthropology to show readers that while any brand serves the business, the mechanisms that enable it are all about connecting with people. Readers will learn how to create, maintain, and operationalize their brand, and think creatively about how to differentiate their product and most importantly, make consumers fall in love with it.

How a company 'positions' a brand is not necessarily how the consumer perceives that brand. Brands allow marketers to add meaning to products and services, but it is consumers who ultimately determine what a brand means. The sources of brand meaning are many and varied, as are the ways in which meanings become attached to brands. Brand Meaning takes a comprehensive and holistic look at how consumers find and create meaning in brands. It explores the fundamental conscious and unconscious elements that connect people with products and brands. Traditional marketing concepts are questioned, and a new brand meaning framework is put forward. The book lays out new and fertile territory for the understanding of how brands can both assimilate and provide meaning. It will leave readers with a better appreciation of what brand means and what brands mean. Primarily intended as a supplemental reader for undergraduate, graduate and MBA courses, the book's scope should also make it rewarding and valuable reading for practitioners in the fields of marketing and advertising.

Two advertising veterans explain the myths about branding—and how even the smallest businesses can benefit by defining themselves to their customers. Branding may be the single most misunderstood concept in marketing. It’s not only for big businesses with big bucks. It’s not about a logo, a color, a font, or a type of advertising. Branding is defining a company’s image in such a way that the customer is left with a single feeling about that business and what they do. Branding is about finding a business’s juicy center. Even small businesses on shoestring budgets and sole practitioners can learn the principles of good branding—an effort that encompasses not just messaging, but multiple day-to-day decisions that shape and build your customers’ perceptions and emotions. With numerous real-life examples and the expertise that comes only from experience, this book guides you to a new way of thinking about your business, and the kind of wisdom that no amount of money can buy.

Marketing expert Maria Ross shares real-life examples and expert interviews to show how organizations of any size can create a winning brand. The secret is starting with a strong Brand Strategy, which goes beyond a logo. This book reveals a simple ten-question process to build a strong brand strategy and bring it to life.

Brand Admiration uses deep research on consumer psychology, marketing, consumer engagement and communication to develop a powerful, integrated perspective and innovative approach to brand management. Using numerous real-world examples and backed by research from top notch academics, this book describes how companies can turn a product, service, corporate, person or place brand into one that customers love, trust and respect; in short, how to make a brand admired. The result? Greater brand loyalty, stronger brand advocacy, and higher brand equity. Admired brands grow more revenue in a more efficient way over a longer period of time and with more opportunities for growth. The real power of Brand Admiration is that it provides concrete, actionable guidance on how brand managers can make customers (and employees) admire a brand. Admired brands don't just do the job; they offer exactly what customers need (enabling benefits), in way that's pleasing, fun, interesting, and emotionally involving (enticing benefits), while making people feel good about themselves (enriching benefits). Providing these benefits, called 3 Es, is foundational to building , strengthening and leveraging brand admiration. In addition, the authors articulate a common-sense and action based measure of brand equity, and they develop dashboard metrics to diagnose if there are any 'canaries in the coal mine', and if so, what to do next. In short, Brand Admiration provides a coherent, cohesive approach to helping the brand stand the test of time. A well-designed, well-managed brand becomes a part of the public consciousness, and ultimately, a part of the culture. This trajectory is the fruit of decisions made from an integrated strategic standpoint. This book shows you how to shift the process for your brand, with practical guidance and an analytical approach.

New techniques to refresh and recharge your brands How do you establish and maintain a strong long-term relationship between your brand and your consumers? Successful brand managers know that it is all about trust and keeping the consumers engaged. The success of recent "green" campaigns as a means of connecting with, satisfying, and attracting new consumers is just the tip of the iceberg. As the international playing field continues to be leveled, in order to sustain and expand their success, brand owners must interact with their customers more than ever before, forging new and stronger links, and increasing their stock of social capital. At last, there is a book that addresses the growing significance of social capital in the business world. Brand Valued explores how as the strength, depth, and quality of interactions between a brand and its customers improve, increased opportunities to demonstrate trustworthiness arise. This in turn creates a self-fulfilling cycle, wherein trust begets social capital, which begets more trust—and even shared thinking—not to mention better sales. Brand Valued will receive the full support of Havas, the fifth largest global communication and marketing services group in the world. In easy to understand terms, and using concrete examples, Brand Valued provides: The tools necessary to stimulate dialogue—and new ways of thinking—between a brand and its intended audience Methods for extending brand messaging to wider audiences Ideas on how to make brands the engines of social capital, getting rid of unsustainable practices to foster more sustainable patterns of consumer behaviour Suggestions for the development of a new brand strategy that reduces costs through innovative and lasting solutions to problems Unpublished data on the role of consumer trust in new products based on research carried out by the Havas Group across over 150 brands in nine different markets A wiki component to the book in an accompanying website. Designed to forge stronger channels of dialogue and communication with customers and consumers, the book is a must-read for anyone committed to keeping their brand relevant in the twenty-first century.

Promote your business with clarity, ease, and authenticity. The Human Centered Brand is a practical branding guide for service based businesses and creatives, that helps you grow meaningful relationships with your clients and your audience. If you're a writer, marketing consultant, creative agency owner, lawyer, illustrator, designer, developer, psychotherapist, personal trainer, dentist, painter, musician, bookkeeper, or other type of service business owner, the methods described in this book will assist you in expressing yourself naturally and creating a resonant, remarkable, and sustainable brand. Read this book to learn: Why conventional branding approaches don't work for service based businesses. How to identify your core values and use them in your business and marketing decisions. Different ways you can make your business unique among all the competition. How to express yourself verbally through your website, emails, articles, videos, talks, podcasts... What makes your "ideal clients" truly ideal, and how to connect with real people who appreciate you as you are. How to craft an effective tagline. What are the most important elements of a visual brand identity, and how to use them to design your own brand. How to craft an exceptional client experience and impress your clients with your professionalism. How your brand relates to your business model, pricing, company culture, fashion style, and social impact. Whether you're a complete beginner or have lots of experience with marketing and design, you'll get new insights about your own brand, and fresh ideas you'll want to implement right away. The companion workbook, checklists, templates, and other bonuses ensure that you not only learn new information, but create a custom brand strategy on your own. Learn more at humancenteredbrand.com

You don’t have a brand—whether it’s for a company or a product—until you have a name. The name is one of the first, longest lasting, and most important decisions in defining the identity of a company, product, or service. But set against a tidal wave of trademark applications, mortifying mistranslations, and disappearing dot-com availability, you won’t find a good name by dumping out Scrabble tiles. Brand Naming details best-practice methodologies, tactics, and advice from the world of professional naming. You’ll learn: What makes a good (and bad) name The step-by-step process professional namers use How to generate hundreds of name ideas The secrets of whittling the list down to a finalist The most complete and detailed book about naming your brand, Brand Naming also includes insider anecdotes, tired trends, brand origin stories, and busted myths. Whether you need a great name for a new company or product or just want to learn the secrets of professional word nerds, put down the thesaurus—not to mention Scrabble—and pick up Brand Naming.

Discover proven strategies for building powerful, world-class brands It's tempting to believe that brands like Apple, Nike, and Zappos achieved their iconic statuses because of serendipity, an unattainable magic formula, or even the genius of a single visionary leader. However, these companies all adopted specific approaches and principles that transformed their ordinary brands into industry leaders. In other words, great brands can be built—and Denise Lee Yohn knows exactly how to do it. Delivering a fresh perspective, Yohn's What Great Brands Do teaches an innovative brand-as-business strategy that enhances brand identity while boosting profit margins, improving company culture, and creating stronger stakeholder relationships. Drawing from twenty-five years of consulting work with such top brands as Frito-Lay, Sony, Nautica, and Burger King, Yohn explains key principles of her brand-as-business strategy. Reveals the seven key principles that the world's best brands consistently implement Presents case studies that explore the brand building successes and failures of companies of all sizes including IBM, Lululemon, Chipotle Mexican Grill, and other remarkable brands Provides tools and strategies that organizations can start using right away Filled with targeted guidance for CEOs, COOs, entrepreneurs, and other organization leaders, What Great Brands Do is an essential blueprint for launching any brand to meteoric heights.