Brand Harmony: Achieving Dynamic Results by Orchestrating Your Customer's Total Experience [Hardcover]

Steve Yastrow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2010

Brand Harmony presents a fresh and revealing approach to branding and explains how companies of all types and sizes can achieve dynamic results by orchestrating their customers' total experience. Brand Harmony is a breakthrough concept that aligns everyone in a company to deliver a powerful, harmonious message to customers.Full of common-sense wisdom, Brand Harmony dispels the myths about branding and shows how companies can successfully create Brand Harmony in the minds of their customers by aligning the entire organization to tell one cumulative story. Brand Harmony takes marketing beyond the marketing department by showing how people throughout an organization need to "be the brand" in order to create comprehensive, company-wide messages that customers will understand and believe. Brand Harmony includes 10 how-to exercises based on Yastrow's proven methods and real-life examples which walk the reader through each stage of the branding process.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...required reading for all of our employees" -- Craig Dwight, Chairman & CEO, Horizon Bancorp

"Clear, compelling and powerful. Branding – in all its power and glory – made accessible and exciting." -- Tom Peters, Tom Peters Company

An important read for the young practitioner to the most senior executive, this common sense approach for business is timeless. -- Paul D. Schrage, Senior Executive Vice President of Marketing, Retired, McDonald’s Corporation

If your marketing person won’t spend the time to do the exercises in this book, it's time to replace her. -- Seth Godin, Author, Purple Cow

Steve completely changed the way our company looks at marketing. This book will be a must-read for my employees. -- Carsten Pederson, President, Club 8 USA

From the Publisher

The average American consumer is constantly bombarded with advertising messages: on TV and radio, in newspapers and magazines, on billboards while we drive. The situation has come to be viewed as such an annoyance by the targeted public that the federal government has had to institute no-call lists to cut down on these intrusions into our own homes.

This media cacophony is a result of the outmoded strategy of Brute Force Branding, the tactic of heavy-handedly forcing an inflexible message on the body of consumers. Author Steve Yastrow offers an alternative with Brand Harmony, and demonstrates that your brand – the desired perception of your product or service by the consumer – is not what you say you are, but what your customer thinks you are. Drawing on his years of experience consulting for such corporate entities as the McDonald’s Corporation and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Yastrow hones the idea of branding to bring it more in line with modern media and the resultant increase in customer power. After finishing Brand Harmony, the reader will not only have a new way in which to look at his or her customer, but will also reexamine the role that each and every company employee can play in an effort to "Be the Brand" and increase company performance.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Select Books; 1 edition (January 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590790537
• ISBN-13: 978-1590790533
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #747,689 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Steve Yastrow is the author of two books, We: The Customer Relationship Advantage and Brand Harmony.

Management guru Tom Peters said, 'When Steve Yastrow writes, I pay close attention,' and called Brand Harmony 'compelling and powerful,' and We a 'superb book.'

Steve's passion is creating revolutionary marketing systems that yield major profit breakthroughs. As a consultant, speaker and writer he challenges his clients, audiences and readers to reinvent the way they look at marketing, offering clear action steps to improve business performance through stronger customer relationships.

The concepts behind Steve's ideas were developed in the 'real world' through his work as president of Yastrow Marketing, a consulting firm which has served such clients as McDonald's Corporation, The Tom Peters Company, Kimpton Hotels, the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism, Agilent Technologies, Jenny Craig International, Great Clips for Hair, Cold Stone Creamery, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Viacord and many other organizations.

Steve was previously vice-president of resort marketing for Hyatt Hotels & Resorts. He is also brand editor for tompeters.com, where he is a regular writer and contributor.

He earned an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a B.A. from Indiana University. Home is Deerfield, IL, where Steve lives with his wife Arna and three kids, Nurit, Levi & Noah.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best-ever book on branding bar none, September 29, 2003

By 

David Greusel "urban architect" (Kansas City, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brand Harmony: Achieving Dynamic Results by Orchestrating Your Customer's Total Experience (Hardcover)

If you've ever thought that maybe branding was something more than a cool logo, a catchy slogan, or a big advertising campaign, this book is definitely for you. In "Brand Harmony," Steve Yastrow shows how all the experiences customers have with a company color their impression of its brand--a fact which is just as true for a mom-and-pop flower shop as it is for McDonald's and Coca-Cola. In fact, this book is probably more relevant to smaller companies that don't have enormous ad budgets, because it demonstrates how advertising is really only a small part of how brand impressions are formed--not even the most important part. If this book doesn't get you thinking about the importance of branding and how you can do a better job of creating positive impressions in your customers' minds, you weren't paying attention. "Brand Harmony" isn't just the management fad of the week--it's a business philosophy that will impact every area of your business (if you do it right). Kudos to Steve, and hats off to all the business owners and managers who "get it."

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book contains some of the best strategies ..., November 6, 2003

By 

"sammyhenry" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brand Harmony: Achieving Dynamic Results by Orchestrating Your Customer's Total Experience (Hardcover)

...for marketers of all kinds. As a small business owner in the Bay Area, my associates, and friends have been struggling to "get the word out" in a cost-efficient way, about our businesses. Mr. Yastrow's work has been just what the doctor ordered. He covers everything from marketing brainstorming sessions to direct mail campaigns, but mostly he helps tie it all together with cohesive visions of our organizations' core missions. I'm hoping that, in exchange for writing this review, Mr. Yastrow will keep me on his mailing list.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Should Have Been Titled: Marketing for CEOs, October 1, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Brand Harmony: Achieving Dynamic Results by Orchestrating Your Customer's Total Experience (Hardcover)

In Brand Harmony, Steve Yastrow has created an important and enduring work that should be required reading for CEOs of companies large and small.

Concise and well-written, Yastrow presents the case that, in essence, marketing is too important to be left only to the marketing department...that in fact, every touchpoint between companies and consumers is what forms the brand experience. Therefore, each of those touchpoints, well beyond advertising and promotion -- the often-endless introductory phone menu to your call centers, the can't-help-you attitude of your ticket agents, the sanitary conditions of your fast food bathrooms, and the like -- all need to be strategized and managed to create consistent, harmonious brand experience.

Brand Harmony is an eye-opening primer for creating organizations which understand that everyone has a role to play in building effective brand experiences, and powerful brands.