What Great Brands Do

Book Title: What Great Brands Do

Author Name: Denise Lee Yohn

Originally Published: 20 November, 2013

Total pages: 262 pages

My Rating: 5 stars

Synopsis:

"What Great Brands Do" shows how companies as diverse as IBM, REI, Starbucks, Lululemon, and more have all used their exceptional brand platforms as management tools to fuel, align, and guide every task they undertake--and have achieved higher-than-average profit margins as a result. What do these great brands have in common?

"What Great Brands Do" shows how these firms rely on a brand-as-business management approach to grow and succeed in tough economic climates, regardless of the size of their marketing budgets.

"What Great Brands Do" distills their approach into seven guiding principles and accompanying best practices to provide a thoughtful and practical methodology for putting a company's brand in the driver's seat of the organization. 

The seven principles are: Great brands start inside. Great brands avoid selling products. Great brands ignore trends. Great brands don't chase customers. Great brands sweat the small stuff. Great brands commit and stay committed. Great brands never need to "give back".

Research suggests that only a small portion of companies practice brand-building the way great brands do--a recent survey of marketing executives revealed that 64 percent feel that their brands do not influence decisions made at their companies. Nearly two-thirds of companies are pouring millions of dollars into marketing and advertising without aligning their business strategies with the brand values and attributes they're communicating. As a result, the full business value of those brands is going unrealized. 

"What Great Brands Do "intends to change the ways readers think about and work with brand-building, and the book is essential reading for any business leader who wants to ensure that current brand activities help lay the foundation for continued growth. 

Review:
I love this book. It helped me a lot in understanding the market and how brands perform on regular basis.
Things I learned:

1. Branding is not merely a marketing tool but also a organizational and strategic tool.

Why Nike’s “Just Do It” is one of the most successful taglines of all times, why Red Bull’s founder actively encouraged rumors that his company’s drink was dangerous, and why Starbucks is about more than just coffee.

2. A brand is the personality of a business, and it should guide a company’s every action.
Brand-building is just a matter of experimentation, good timing and sheer luck.

3. Understand your brand and how it should influence the everyday running of the business.

4. People don't buy products based on a rational analysis of price and quality, but instead consider the feelings and values they associate with a brand.
Having a coffee at Starbucks, is not just about getting your morning caffeine fix. It’s also about the store’s sensory experience – the music, the furniture or the employees’ smiles – that you notice every time you walk through the front door.

5. Great brand means higher profit margins.
6. Strong brand have easier time aligning their organization to a set of values.
7. Brand can be used like a strategic compass, guiding the company at large as to how it should build its corporate culture, design processes and craft marketing campaigns.

8. Your brand is what your company does and how you do it.

9. Your corporate culture is your brand’s foundation.

10. You have to educate every stakeholder about what your brand is and why it’s important. Each person must also understand how their actions impact the brand, and how they can accurately represent the brand and enhance its value through their everyday work.

11. One way to do this is through brand toolboxes and brand engagement sessions.

A brand toolbox is a simple item that helps employees understand and apply brand values everyday. It could, for example, take the form of a deck of cards or a little book, with references and anecdotes that relate your company’s core values.

Brand engagement sessions are meant to help employees understand and identify how brand values influence every part of the business. Starbucks held a brand engagement session where managers participated in a walk-through presentation that followed the journey of a coffee bean from farm to cup, explaining how the company’s brand affected every step.

12. If you don't develop greatness among your employees, your employees are unlikely to deliver greatness to your customers.

13. Great brands build an emotional connection with the customer.
14. Successful branding is about emotions, not products. create an emotional connection between the brand and the customer.

15. When your business is primarily based on knowledge, then people rather than products- it becomes your brand.

16. Great brands don’t follow trends, they create them. following trends can be a risky because trends change quickly.
17. When you follow a trend set by a competitor, consumers will see you as a follower, not a leader.

18. Challenge existing trends: questioning the status quo and commonly accepted dogmas that dominate your industry.
19. Another way to create your own trend is to anticipate and take advantage of a cultural movement.

20. Great brands don’t try to please everyone. 

21. Focus their energy on core customers.
First, you target your ideal potential customers. Then you segment their day and analyze during what times the needs relevant to your product are at their strongest. Out of these needs, you pick the ones that best correspond to your brand identity and focus your marketing on those needs

22. Great brands adhere to their core ideology, even if it means saying no to enticing opportunities.

23. Besides being a slave to the latest trends and chasing after customers indiscriminately, there’s a third mistake that brands can make: Focusing too intently on growth.

To meet shareholders’ growth expectations and to make a quick profit, Krispy Kreme started selling its doughnuts at places like gas stations and grocery stores as well. This compromised the quality of the product, ruined consumers’ experience of the brand. Perception of the brand was almost destroyed.

24. When you face difficult strategic or moral decisions, look to your core ideology: the original intent of your company's founders. The ideology comprises the values, goals and traits that you’ve promised to your customers will never be compromised.

25. The challenge isn’t to find growth opportunities but to decide which ones to pursue. Sometimes a company will be tempted by “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunities, but the company must say no, if the opportunity isn’t in line with its core ideology.

26. Your brand can't just be a promise. It must be a promise delivered.

27. Great companies ensure every detail of the customer experience is in line with its brand.

• You need to know all the customer touchpoints where your company interacts with customers. customer experience is based on interactions at those touchpoints.
• You need to align every touchpoint to your brand values, then monitor how employees at each touchpoint are living up to these values and how the customer experiences them.

28. Great brands are generous in supporting project relevant to them.

29. A strong brand can also be good for the world: “doing good” is a key factor in branding.
73 percent of buyers would switch their current brand to a competing one if the latter supported a good cause.
30. Your main goal to create shared value for both your company’s brand and the outside world. Support projects that are relevant to your industry & customers. It should mirror your brand’s ideology.
Example: Create Jobs for USA” program undertaken by Starbucks.

31. Everyone in your organization must know and live your brand values.
Strong brand can function as a guiding compass for your entire organization, influencing everyday decisions. You need to operationalize your brand strategy, this requires implementing two brand-building core competences across your entire company.

Distribute information regarding your brand and brand strategy to everyone in your organization, and employees keep themselves updated on brand information. Make it clear that your brand is your business.

32. You should require compliance from employees or reward those employees who demonstrate brand values well.
Implement projects that aim at aligning the whole organization with your long-term brand strategy.

33. A brand is more than a mere marketing tool. It's a guiding compass for a company's organization & strategy. Strong brands can attract lots of customers buy companies have to be careful to uphold their brand’s integrity and not just chase after trends, growth or every customer segment.
34. Let your brand shine through your work.

Overall a great read and informative.