There is surely no one-size-fits-all approach to developing a winning brand. To me, brand success often feels like a form of alchemy. Some unpredictable confluence of timing, zeitgeist, novelty, craftiness and sheer luck. The one constant seems to be creativity, whether applied to dreaming up an entirely new kind of product or determining how to market or package a less-unique one.
Ideas for sparking that creativity are a large part of the focus of the three brand-related books that have been gathering dust on my desk for several months. These are not super-new books (more like recent-ish!) and I’ve kept them in a stack and wanted to review them as a group and this issue’s focus on brands and branding research finally gave me my chance!
The Physics of Brand by Aaron Keller, Renee Marino and Dan Wallace ($32.99; HOW Books) takes a wide-ranging, often science-based approach that nevertheless feels conversational, if a bit on the rambly side. They make the case that most of the ways we approach thinking about and measuring the value of brand are misguided and outdated – a suitable subtitle might be “Musings on the evolving definition of brand.” The upshot is that moments matter. Those moments when we interact with, are introduced to or have an emotionally compelling (good or bad!) experience with a brand are what shapes our views of it. The authors drive home the essential value of a brand being authentic through and through, of having a core set of deliverables and being there for consumers time and time again. The trouble for marketers is, you can’t really create that authenticity – a brand either has it or it doesn’t. But what marketing can do is tell the brand’s story in ways that feel authentic and true.
Brands and Branding by Stephen Brown ($43.00; Sage Publishing) takes a more prosaic, though no less entertaining, approach, devoting chapters to the components of brands (logos, names), their roles (they tell stories), their lives (brands are alive!), etc. Along with offering helpful reading lists at the end of each chapter, Brown includes “brand task” exercises to get you to think about brands from a variety of perspectives.
One of my favorite passages is his overview of Robert Cialdini’s views on persuasion and how they are relevant to brands. Brown’s Ten Commandments of Branding also offer a fairly concise roadmap of dos and don’ts for brand success.
With its overviews of brain function and discussions of the emotional impact brands have on us, Daryl Weber’s Brand Seduction ($16.99; Career Press) covers familiar territory in its first half before getting deeper into what Weber calls the Brand Fantasy – the interconnected web of moods, feelings, associations and attitudes surrounding a brand. In the latter chapters he walks readers through the process of using projective-type techniques to explore their own feelings about the brands with which they are involved. He then cites case studies of brands such as Warby Parker and Hendrick’s gin that have been able to create compelling fantasies. I appreciated his concise overview of the various research techniques that he feels are most useful for uncovering consumers’ emotional responses.
Doesn’t fare too well
Aside from Weber’s mentions of it, marketing research doesn’t fare too well in these books. The various authors cite common (and not wholly inaccurate) charges that standard research approaches are not always ideal because consumers are not reliable observers or reporters of their own behaviors nor are they good at dealing with questions about unique or groundbreaking products or services.
But as Weber makes clear in his section on marketing research, the same kind of creativity that produces to great products can also drive the research that’s conducted about them, leading to new thinking and new approaches to concocting the recipe of innovation, timing and promotion that leads to brand success.