[00:00:00] Ideas are everywhere. Welcome the lessons learned in marketing, the Phoenix Group podcast. I'm your host, David. Today, I want to go through three books on branding, and I hesitated to call it the three best books or my three favorite books. It's hard to rank them, but these are three really great books that I recommend on Brading. How about that? But first, I want to kick this off because this just arrived in my inbox from Austin Kleon. [00:00:33][33.5]
[00:00:34] Austin Kleon sends out an email every week, kind of his best shares, his 10 best shares and his number one share was You have to be obsessed from a blog post he wrote on St. Patrick's Day. And he starts the post with a quote from John Baldessari, Talent is cheap. You have to be obsessed. Otherwise you're going to give up. And reading that, at first I thought, oh, talent is cheap, like acquiring talent or finding talent. But I think what John was talking about is more our own talent, like our talent that we have. And in order to really get the most out of that talent, to really become great at what you do, you need to have obsession. This is something I struggle with personally, but it's also something I really try to coach our creative team on. And everyone at Phenix, we talked about this on an earlier podcast about not stopping at your first best are your first good idea, just pursuing and working it through and working it through and I guess obsession. In Austin's newsletter, he goes through a bunch of writing or he it Austin's newsletter. He highlights Octavia Butler and a lot of her writing, which I'm definitely going to look into. I haven't read anything from Octavia Butler, but he points out a few great books and he also highlights this from her past. He says she took archery in high school and saw that, saw the positive obsession as a way of aiming yourself, your life at your chosen target. Decide what you want. Aim high and go for it. Today, we're talking about branding. And really, that is what branding is all about. Persistence really staying the course. It's why it's so important for companies to really obsess about what it is, the chosen direction that they're taking, what is the chosen direction that they're taking. Then Aim High are then, you know, aim yourself and your business at your target and go for it. Persistence, she said, was her most important talent sticking with it? What I found with brands and with great companies that we've worked with, the ones that really have it together, is that persistence is so much easier when there's an obsession behind it. And either it's the Führer or the the fans of the Saskatchewan Roughriders or a business that truly has a strong, strong, defined purpose. And in a lot of ways, and even in our branding sessions, it's not so much about all the things you want to do or the all the things you company could do. But it's what could you never stop doing, what is at your heart and soul? What could you take away? And it would never be the same. That's your obsession. So let's look at what I think are three fantastic books on branding that maybe would help you find that obsession or really define kind of how to clarify that obsession and use that obsession. [00:03:56][202.2]
[00:04:11] Here is book number one, How Brands Grow What Marketers Don't Know by Byron Sharp. And it's a relatively new edition of this book. 2014 is the revised version. There were really, I think, three books. He has the hardcover books, How Brands Grow Volume One and How Brands Grow Volume two, Part two. And then this is the 2014 Revised Edition, which is an e-book. And that's always my preference personally. So who is Byron Sharp and why do I care? Well, he's a professor of marketing science at the University of South Australia and also a director at the Arenberg based Institute. And they do research for some of the leading companies in the world, like Coke and Colgate-Palmolive and GM, Procter Gamble. So he is he's a smarty pants. I'd say he has over 100 academic papers and is is in tons of journals and business schools, well quoted and definitely well thought of. Now, all that doesn't mean it's practical, but I think in this case, Byron Sharp has the practical married with the academic part. So Byron kind of shakes things up for me. He throws this loop and I'll just read it right in the preface here. He says, Marketers, even senior marketing academics, like to say that there can be no laws concerned with marketing. These people argue that consumers are far too individual and unpredictable. Research has shown this is utter nonsense. This ill founded belief stops academics from doing their job and searching for like patterns in buying behavior and marketing effects. It also allows marketers to carry on with anything goes marketing plans. Marketers argue with each other about things that have nothing to do with the creativity of the discipline about things that should be known for certain. It's time for this to stop. This book reveals the predictable patterns in how buyers buy and how sales grow. Things all marketers should know not argue about how he's pretty emphatic there, and the book does go into great detail about how brands grow. But really it comes down to a pretty fundamental and simple thing. And again, right in the preface, he goes through the most important knowledge contained in this book. No marketing activity, including innovation, should be seen as a goal in itself. Its goal is to hold on to or improve mental and physical availability. This is critical and Birhan goes through this repeatedly getting mental and physical ability. Availability is how brands grow. Let me try to summarize that. So growth in market share comes by increasing popularity, and that is by gaining more buyers. Brand growth is all about building two assets to market based assets, physical availability and mental availability. Why? Well, brands that are easier to buy for more people in more situations have more market share. It is really as simple as that. And as Byron goes on to say, marketers need to improve the branding of their product, for example, it needs to look like them and only them to continuously reach large audiences cost effectively. Advertising works largely by refreshing and occasionally building memory structures and less by trying to convince rational minds or winning emotional hearts. So marketers need to research those memory structures and ensure that their advertising refreshes those structures by continuously using your brand's distinctive assets. And what's a distinctive asset? Well, it can get quite complex and depending on your brand, can get really complex. But basically it's what brings to mind your brand 100 percent of the time with 100 percent of the people. And that's a really high bar to reach for. But it's worth reaching for when I read through a little bit about how this works, according to Byron. So this is from how brands grow. Memory effects buying. Buying affects memory. A stark empirical fact is that we know more about brands we buy and we buy the brands we know more about. We rarely buy brands we don't know and rarely think about brands we don't buy. One of the most well-established scientific laws about brand associations reflects this. Brand users are more likely to elicit associations than nonusers of the brand. Now, that's really common sense and you can't quite argue that. But then how do we get known and how do we start to build those associations again? Let me read a little bit from Byron in a section called Kud Retrieval. What we easily think of largely determines what we buy. So what determines what we easily think of in any particular instance? First, the doorway or queue to access memory matters that determines the possible path. So your thoughts can travel down, open the green door and you travel down one memory path, open the red door and another path appears. The cues themselves come from the external environment and our internal thoughts, sometimes the same time. A stimulated cue first activates brands directly linked in memory, and these direct links arise when the brand and the cue are experienced at the same time, without a direct link to the key to getting retrieved from memory is extremely unlikely. Now, for me, that's a really academical way of saying what I think of something. I think of your brand. So it means two things are necessary for managing brands, knowing what cues buyers use when they think of options to buy and building strong, fresh links to those cues. If your links aren't strong, then a buyer can retrieve other options, usually your competitors. And if one of those options can do the job, then sorry. That's usually what gets bot. Buyers rarely want more work to go searching for other alternatives if a good enough one is easily available. So let's work through an example. If you feel tired, you might look for a clue, something to pick me up. And so options arrive, you know, soft drink, Pepsi, Starbucks, those kind of things pop into your brain based on what you have mentally available as a pick me up. Now, if one of those top options easily works, you know, there's a Coke vending machine right nearby, then expanding extra energy, looking for other alternatives isn't necessary. If none of those options work, maybe the vending machine only takes coins and you don't have any cash. Then you start to go further for alternatives or ask for advice from others. But in most cases, a quick search of memory can provide more than enough easily viable options. Now, an important point is that the direction of retrieval also matters. Just because the brand easily cues something from memories, it doesn't mean that something can cue the brand just as easily. For example, it's possible that, you know, Moroccan born French brothers started, I guess, the clothing brand, but it's unlikely that French fashion will ever evoke the brand. Yes. So it's a one way retrieval with mental availability. We're interested in what cues buyers use when we want our brand to be retrieved, when people are thinking of something to wear to work, do they think of guests rather than what do people think of when the brand is cued? What does guess make them think of? I think a lot of times we do waste a lot of our time thinking, oh, we want a positive ID, we want a positive impression in the marketplace. So what does my brand make people think of when we really should be thinking of? What do buyers of this type of product think of when they're ready to buy? So that's a quick little summary of how brands grow. And really, I'm just scratching the surface with what I've told you about those books. They're their reference material that I go back to repeatedly. And it's why I recommend it is academic. So they're not kind of cheap. I think the e-book was about 40 bucks worth the money. How Brands Grow Biron Sharp. That's Book one. Let's move on to book two, OK? [00:13:43][571.6]
[00:13:54] Number two is called Brand Aid by Brad Vannauk, and I like the title Brand Aid. It's a quick reference guide to solving your branding problems and strengthening your market position. Now, brand aid is completely different from how brands grow. This is a more kind of practical hands on, hands on book. And maybe if I just sort of give you a sense of what the table of contents has. So, you know, talks about brand management, talks about designing the brand, building the brand, leveraging the brand brand metrics, what are the important research pieces, brand management considerations and brand management in brief, just to give you a flavor of brand and and where his mind is that, I'm going to read a little bit from the preface. So you understand kind of what you can expect from this book today. Brands are ubiquitous. In the past decade and a half, I have helped to brand not only companies in their products and services, but also colleges and universities, high schools, municipalities, professional and trade associations, restaurants, sports teams, museums, orchestras, libraries, magazines, health systems, blah, blah, blah, blah, and a wide variety of other entities. For better. For worse, almost everything in the world is now branded. Why has this marketing discipline become so popular in an age of increasing product, commoditization and choice? The brand is an easy way for people to break through the clutter. It helps them simplify certain choices in their lives. And brands are increasingly fulfilling people's needs for affiliation and identification needs that traditional institutions are struggling to meet as well as they used to. Now, in a sense, Brads touching on what I was talking about in how brands grow and that idea that you need to come to mind. But in a lot of ways, more traditionally thinking of brands in the sense of building better associations and elevating the idea of what it is your purpose is. Now, why I like brand aid is because it's a bit more practical for marketers. He goes through brand essence. What is brand essence, how to find it, giving some examples of others. And I think that will help people get to their own brand essence. Similarly with brand promise and brand personality, they're small sections with examples and advice, and that goes on to brand architecture, brand planning and brand management. There is quite a lot about brand management, which is also much ignored. Part, or at least as I see it, we often go through great effort to determine brand and build brand, work out the visual identity of workout, the brand purpose, hand over the brand document. And at that point, the marketer, the internal marketing team needs to do the brand management. And so while there are definitely pieces in here that I would discard, there are also a lot of little gems. It's worth a read and it's definitely worth having on your bookshelf. BrandAid a quick reference guide to solving your branding problem. [00:16:53][178.9]
[00:17:07] And the third book I want to recommend now, remember, this isn't a comprehensive list of the best or the top or whatever. It's just three I recommend is What Great Brands Do by Denise Lee Yohn . Now, Denise Lee Yohn was on our podcast from her second book, Brand Fusion, which is also a great book. But I still liked what great brands do ahead of that. And here's why. It's because this book really operationalizes brands. Often brands are just misunderstood or misinterpreted, and the idea of brand is more than it really needs to be, more than just a tool for appealing to external audiences. And although brand aid, the book I talked about just a minute ago is all about, you know, the external definition of a brand as a company name, the logo, the image, the personality, the look and feel. The fact is that the brand is more than that. And those are just symbols of your brand or expressions of your brand. And if you just limit it to that, then you really fail to realize the real value and potential of branding. As Denise says, a brand is a bundle of values and attributes that define the value you deliver to people through the entire customer experience, the unique way of doing business that forms the basis of your company's relationships with all of its stakeholders. Simply put, your brand is what your company does and how you do it. Your brand is not what you say you are. It's what you do. Reading through what great brands do from Denise Leon, you'll start to appreciate more about your culture and how the brand can really impact your culture and the culture can impact the brand. And that's where her second book really goes into that fusion and how they're inseparable. But this book profiles brands that really do extraordinary things. They're terrific examples. And it I really think it will get you thinking beyond just the idea of, oh, this is my brand personality and these are my brand guidelines and I need to express them this way. Now, all of these books have a similar theme, and that is that they're really setting your brand. Denise Leon also emphasizes that and warns that breaking from your brand, ignoring your culture, following trends, chasing consumers and running over details are all very common errors. And a lot of the best and brightest executives make these mistakes all the time, despite their best intentions. This is where looking at what great brands do not want you as a leader can really give you a good perspective on on how others have have actually done this. So the full title is What Great Brands Do, the seven brand building principles that separate the best from the rest. Denise Leon has done extensive research, gone through and interviewed dozens, if not hundreds of executives and of good and bad brands and kind of summarizes it within this book. And let me go through the summary of what those seven principles are. One is great brands start inside. So cultivating a great corporate culture in brand building is of primary importance. Culture change is the first step in any effort to define or redefine the company's brand, because culture determines whether the brand is embraced and appropriately interpreted and reinforced by all the stakeholders, including vendors, distributors, agencies and strategic partners. The second principle is great brands avoid selling products. Now this is about the importance of developing that emotional connection through your products rather than relying on just your product superiority. The best products don't always win out for a simple reason that people don't rationally assess a product's features when they make a decision. People buy according to how brands make them feel or what identity that helps them express or experience. The third principle is great brands ignore trends. This is a really hard one. It actually is probably when we go through our brands sessions, one of the reasons why brands often have a confused purpose. So the third principle great brands ignore trends. Trends may help attract attention in the short term, but they can change so quickly that you always put your brand identity at risk by following them. The fourth principle as a corollary. Third, great brands don't chase customers. Chasing customers holds the same temptation as following trends, and it takes a similar toll. It compromises the brand identity for the sake of increased short term revenue. Principle five is great brands sweat the small stuff. I love this principle. You recognize that we have elevated expectations as consumers. And great brands go to great lengths to close the gaps between what my expectations are and what you are delivering, and I forgot to mention she has action steps for each of these principles and the action steps for this one. Sweating the small stuff includes really building customer experience, architecture to identify the optimal experiences for consumers in each of your channels and building a brand touchpoint wheel to assess, align and strengthen the impact of your brand. And once you get into this stuff, you're really getting into a super cool stuff for your brand principle. Six great brands commit and stay committed. Oh, we've already talked about this right at the beginning with obsession, one of the most difficult principles to uphold and one that only great brands do well, great brands. I can't even imagine how many opportunities great brands consciously and deliberately forego because they have a long term commitment to who they are. They will sacrifice the sacred those short term profits and growth to maintain the brand integrity. Deniece early on in principle six has a great chapter on on on this committing and staying focused. And her last principle, the last chapter I guess is great brands never have to give back. What does I mean, no corporate social responsibility? No, exactly the opposite. Great brands make their social and cultural contributions by creating shared value for all stakeholders, including their communities. So if you create this purpose driven brand, this endearing vision, you are then set to find shared values. You have your values so clearly defined, you can find partners now that absolutely have the exact same values as you do. Pam Klein and I were just in a seminar from the BCA AMA Harnessing Brand Power for Good by Joanne Turner. And it was exactly this idea that getting those shared values, connecting with with ideas and purposes that share your values will really not only make an impact in the community, but also make an impact on your brand. And if you have those shared values, you've lived those shared values and people see those values, that then gives you the right to attach yourself to a like minded cause and in a way that will have an actual employment impact. It makes sense to join in the conversation now. Like everything, it's not easy and it's not quick. It takes years of development to find the value and maintain and remain true to that value. Joanne Turner in her seminar that we took said, you know, you have to do the right thing first. In my notes from that conference, I have circled in red and highlighted do not say it until you can back. It's Denise. Leon's book is fantastic. I definitely recommend that one and I recommend it highly. One thing I notice, and maybe it's just me, but I find that with the books I really like, they tend to have fantastic notes, like references of further reading to dig into what they've talked about. And the niece, Leon, is meticulous at the end of every chapter, giving links to and connections to all of the things she's talked about. So you can read further on the ones that you want to dig deeper into. Denise Leon, what great friends do. That's it. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy those books. [00:25:54][527.1]
[1513.3]
