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Welcome to Loyalty MagazineLoyalty Magazine reports on customer retention,loyalty schemes, rewards, affinity, CRM, call centre issues, direct and viral marketing, mobile and internet channels for both B2B and B2C enterprises. It covers all global markets and business sectors, including retail, financial services, travel and hotels, telecoms and electronic commerce. |
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Wednesday, 01 December 2010 13:12 |
 Choosing a book about brands
It is not surprising there are so many books about brands. What your product or company stands for, and what message it conveys is crucial to the success of any business.
But which book do you rely on for advice?
There is no easy answer to this question, and certainly the brand gurus don’t always agree.
But here is a selection of this year’s brand books to take away and browse the next time you have a few hours spare.
Build a Brand in 30 Days, with Brand Strategy Guru Simon Middleton
About the author; Simon Middleton has worked with many of the big names, including Barclays, Aviva, Meril and prêt A Manger. He writes and presents The Brand Effect, the first TV series to look in depth at brands and branding on British television
What the book sets out to do:
Teach you everything you need to know about branding in 30 days – experience not necessary.
The tutorial will not only give you a fast track education in branding, it will also help you build a proper brand for your business/product/service, or even for a charity or public sector organisation. It also has input into how to brand a team or an organisation, or even yourself.
How does it work?
Each ‘day” is iesigned to take you through an importn stage which requires some reflection, self examination and active thinking. Even some creativity.
Middleton actually suggests you take three months to work through each activity afterwhich you will have the knowledge to create a brand that you wouldn’t have without the book.
Does it work? We haven’t actually done the work, but it all seems quite reasonable. We particularly liked the expert input, case studies and ‘real brand stories’ because it brought the theory to life.
It was a little alarming not to get to “What to do when your brand goes wrong” until Day 28. It seems rather optimistic to assume that nothing will mar the progress until then. However, at least it got covered.
Build a Brand in 30 Days by Simon Middleton is published by Capstone, price £12.99. More info: www.brandstrategyguru.com
Private Label – Turning the retail brand threat into your biggest opportunity by Keith Lincoln and Lars Thomassen
Private label has been growing at twice the rate of leading household brands for the last ten years, and as a whole is the biggest brand in the world, and the bigger manufacturer.
But throughout all of this time, it has always been thought of as the poor relation. ‘People buy private label beans, if they can’t afford Heinz’ has gone the accepted thinking.
That is until recently.
Sales of Wal-Mart’s private label brands are worth more than Unilever’s, PepsiCo’s, and Coca-Cola’s put together, and in the UK alone, accounts for about 50% of the grocery shopping basket.
All of those people choosing private label brands can’t be doing so simply on price if the quality is terrible. They have to be making a brand choice.
What does the book do?
This book examines the rapidly increasing presence of ‘premium’ private label products such as Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference and Tesco’s Finest. It was published in 2009 but is still extremely relevant.
The book is based on world wide research by Saatchi & Saatchi and includes information from a wide variety of sources, including academic, commercial original research and what it calls left-brain thinking.
The authors have developed a programme to help the reader identify those opportunitys, related to retail brands that can become a business opportunity. This could be a brand for a mass FMCG retailer or a standalone specialist.
The authors write: “Our experience to date has shown us that senior management has enormous interest in this rea as it represents their most critical strategic issue, one that continues to grow in importance, one that needs a guide. Senior management, from brand manufacturers and r etailers alike, need to better understand the implications of their Private Label developments. Let us also not forget the communications industry, which as increasingly to take the lead in this area.
What the book covers:
The authors take the reader through the private label business, and then using the Saatchi & Daatchi X research report, addresses the issues that are directly relevant.
Being a marketing book there is a wheel of opportunity with ten principles, which are applied to specific opportunities open to retailers. What differentiates the book is that it also looks at private label brands from the perspective of the shopper, and the supplier.
There are a comforting number of buzz phrases, such as “winning mind shelf”, innovate, imagineer and involve and restore and reinvent the store; lots of quotes and masses of thought provoking content. There is also some explanation of the Saatchi & Saatchi “Lovemark” theory.
Private Label, turning the retail brand threat into your biggest opportunity by Keith Lincoln and Lars Thomassen is published by Kogan Page, price £14.99
 Creating Powerful Brands
Creating Powerful Brands was first published in 1992, and is now in its fourth edition. As a textbook that brings together the theory and examples of how branding works in practice, it really can’t be bettered.
Authored by Leslie de Chernatony, Malcolm McDonald and Elain Wallace, this book is on the reading list for every university marketing course and deservedly so.
Should it be revisited by working marketers?
Certainly, if you want to brush up on the core marketing rules, but not necessarily if you want out of the box, innovative thinking.
Of the 30,000 new products launched in 2005, 90% of them failed because of poor marketing, according to the Harvard Business Review. The other 10% went on to become successful brands. By examining these, much can be learned.
This book has been “brought bang up to date” according to the back cover. Is this accurate?
There is no mention of Social Media, it is covered on one page under Social Communities, and Twitter gets one mention. It talks about what Starbucks is doing with Facebook in Seattle, but it doesn’t cover more recent online developments. On the other hand, it could be argued that modern fads come and go, but it is only the really important stuff that stands the test of time.
Creating Powerful Brands by Leslie de Chernatony, Malcolm McDonald and Elaine Wallace is published byButterworth-Heineman, price £49.95 |
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Positive impact of the feedback huddle