The Brand Gap

Using the visual language of the boardroom, Marty Neumeier presents the first unified theory of branding - a set of five disciplines to help companies bridge the gap between brand strategy and brand execution. Those with a grasp of branding will be inspired by what they find here, and those who would like to understand it better will suddenly "get it."

Best-selling brand expert Marty Neumeier shows you how to make the leap from a company-driven past to the consumer-driven future. You’ll learn how to flip your brand from offering products to offering meaning, from value protection to value creation, from cost-based pricing to relationship pricing, from market segments to brand tribes, and from customer satisfaction to customer empowerment. In the 13 years since Neumeier wrote The Brand Gap, the influence of social media has proven his core theory: “A brand isn’t what you say it is – it’s what they say it is.” People are no longer consumers or market segments or tiny blips in big data. They don’t buy brands. They join brands. They want a vote in what gets produced and how it gets delivered. They’re willing to roll up their sleeves and help out – not only by promoting the brand to their friends, but by contributing content, volunteering ideas, and even selling products or services. At the center of the book is the Brand Commitment Matrix, a simple tool for organizing the six primary components of a brand. Your brand community is your tribe. How will you lead it?

"When everybody zigs, zag," says Marty Neumeier in this fresh view of brand strategy. ZAG follows the ultra-clear "whiteboard overview" style of the author’s first book, THE BRAND GAP, but drills deeper into the question of how brands can harness the power of differentiation. The author argues that in an extremely cluttered marketplace, traditional differentiation is no longer enough—today companies need “radical differentiation” to create lasting value for their shareholders and customers. In an entertaining 3-hour read you’ll learn: - why me-too brands are doomed to fail - how to "read" customer feedback on new products and messages - the 17 steps for designing “difference” into your brand - how to turn your brand’s “onliness” into a “trueline” to drive synergy - the secrets of naming products, services, and companies - the four deadly dangers faced by brand portfolios - how to “stretch” your brand without breaking it - how to succeed at all three stages of the competition cycle From the back cover: In an age of me-too products and instant communications, keeping up with the competition is no longer a winning strategy. Today you have to out-position, out-maneuver, and out-design the competition. The new rule? When everybody zigs, zag. In his first book, THE BRAND GAP, Neumeier showed companies how to bridge the distance between business strategy and design. In ZAG, he illustrates the number-one strategy of high-performance brands—radical differentiation. ZAG is an AIGA Design Press book, published under Peachpit's New Riders imprint in partnership with AIGA. For a quick peek inside ZAG, go to www.zagbook.com.

Part manifesto, part handbook, THE DESIGNFUL COMPANY provides a lively overview of a growing trend in management–design thinking as a business competence. According to the author, traditional managers have relied on a two-step process to make decisions, which he calls “knowing” and “doing.” Yet in today’s innovation-driven marketplace, managers need to insert a middle step, called “making.” Making is a phase in which assumptions are questioned, futures are imagined, and prototypes are tested, producing a wide range of options that didn’t exist before. The reader is challenged to consider the author’s bold assertion: There can be no real innovation without design. Those who are new to Marty Neumeier’s “whiteboard” series may want to ramp up with the first two books, THE BRAND GAP and ZAG. Both are easy reads. Covered in THE DESIGNFUL COMPANY: - the top 10 “wicked problems” that only design can solve - a new, broader definition of design - why designing trumps deciding in an era of change - how to harness the “organic drivetrain” of value creation - how aesthetics add nuance to managing - 16 levers to transform your company - why you should bring design management inside - how to assemble an innovation metateam - how to recognize and reward talent From the back cover: The complex business problems we face today can’t be solved with the same thinking that created them. Instead, we need to start from a place outside traditional management. Forget total quality. Forget top-down strategy. In an era of fast-moving markets and leap-frogging innovations, we can no longer “decide” the way forward. Today we have to “design” the way forward–or risk ending up in the fossil layers of history. Marty Neumeier, author of THE BRAND GAP and ZAG, presents the new management engine that can transform your company into a powerhouse of nonstop innovation.

"This engaging and highly informative book presents twenty interviews with the world's leading designers, anthropologists and innovators in the field of branding. In a series of illuminating, spirited conversations with preeminent global brand designer Debbie Millman, these influential figures share their take on how and why humans have branded the world around us, and the ideas, inventions, and insight inherent in this process"--Provided by publisher.

Marty Neumeier, acclaimed author of The Brand Gap and other books on business creativity, has compressed decades of practical experience into The 46 Rules of Genius--46 glittering gems that will light students path to creative brilliance. This is an essential handbook for students in graphic design, branding, marketing, business, Journalism and writing courses, and more. The rules in this book are timeless. None of them are new, yet they can help students create something new. Michelangelo didn't invent the hammer and chisel, but by using these tools he sculpted the Pietá. And just as you can't shape a block of marble with your bare hands, you can't shape ideas with your bare mind. You need rules. Rules are the tools of genius. Use them when they help, put them aside when they don't. Most creative people are focused on their projects, and reading a long book is a luxury they can ill afford. So here's a slim volume with bite-size advice. Students can reach into it randomly, underline its salient points, and return to its rules as needed. Neumeier starts with advice on strategy--or how to get the right idea. He continues with practical tips on execution--how to get the idea right. From there, he moves on to building creative skills over time, and finally to putting your brilliance to work in the larger world.

A revised new edition of the bestselling toolkit for creating, building, and maintaining a strong brand From research and analysis through brand strategy, design development through application design, and identity standards through launch and governance, Designing Brand Identity, Fourth Edition offers brand managers, marketers, and designers a proven, universal five-phase process for creating and implementing effective brand identity. Enriched by new case studies showcasing successful world-class brands, this Fourth Edition brings readers up to date with a detailed look at the latest trends in branding, including social networks, mobile devices, global markets, apps, video, and virtual brands. Features more than 30 all-new case studies showing best practices and world-class Updated to include more than 35 percent new material Offers a proven, universal five-phase process and methodology for creating and implementing effective brand identity

THE BRAND GAP is the first book to present a unified theory of brand-building. Whereas most books on branding are weighted toward either a strategic or creative approach, this book shows how both ways of thinking can unite to produce a “charismatic brand”—a brand that customers feel is essential to their lives. In an entertaining two-hour read you’ll learn: • the new definition of brand • the five essential disciplines of brand-building • how branding is changing the dynamics of competition • the three most powerful questions to ask about any brand • why collaboration is the key to brand-building • how design determines a customer’s experience • how to test brand concepts quickly and cheaply • the importance of managing brands from the inside • 220-word brand glossary From the back cover: Not since McLuhan’s THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE has a book compressed so many ideas into so few pages. Using the visual language of the boardroom, Neumeier presents the first unified theory of branding—a set of five disciplines to help companies bridge the gap between brand strategy and customer experience. Those with a grasp of branding will be inspired by the new perspectives they find here, and those who would like to understand it better will suddenly “get it.” This deceptively simple book offers everyone in the company access to “the most powerful business tool since the spreadsheet.”

Furious customers? Missed deadlines? Failed products? The problems your business faces may stem from a single issue: lack of empathy. Being empathetic at work means seeing the situation from another's perspective, and using that vantage point to shape your leadership style, workplace culture, and branding strategy. Pairing her knowledge as a branding expert with proven research and fascinating stories from executives, change-makers and community leaders, Maria Ross reveals exactly how empathy makes brands and organizations stronger and more successful. Ross shows why your business needs to cultivate more empathy now, and shares the habits and traits of empathetic leaders who foster more productivity and loyalty. She gives practical tips, big and small, for how to align your mission and values and hire the right people, cultivating a more empathetic--and innovative--workplace culture. Finally, she gives you the goods on building your empathetic brand in an authentic and proactive way, and shows how doing so results in happier customers, innovative work cultures and increased profits. In this practical playbook for businesses of all types, Maria Ross proves that empathy is not just good for society--it's great for business, and may transform you at a personal level, too.