Customer Reviews

Brand Leadership: The Next Level of the Brand Revolution

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'll save you some effort. Read the first five chapters of this book and stop. Aaker is the king of brand equity and successful strategies for organizing and developing brands but he also has a knack for being a bit long-winded.

Don't get me wrong. The guy's a genius and the world of marketing is much the better for having him (and Joachimsthaler) around. However, in Management Communications at Business School they teach you to know your audience. There's a reason most business books are 160-220 pages. Business leaders don't have time to spend 12-15 hours reading texts. Aaker ignores this fact when offering the 330-page "Brand Leadership."

That being said it's a great book for the frameworks and approaches it provides. Aaker truly is one of the elite few that really rises above the clutter in offering marketing insights to today's manager. Unfortunately like Michael Porter with Strategy, he feels that this level of insight affords the right to pontificate beyond the attention span of most managers.

His theories on brand identity, brand architecture, and brand equity are invaluable though and for this reason the book is well worth the money and time. Particularly outstanding is the chapter on Brand Architecture which provides a stark contrast to the "focus" theories of Ries & Trout.

Shortcuts:

Chapter 6 -- Discusses Nike-Adidas market dynamics. Least interesting chapter in the book.

Chapter 7 -- Addresses sponsorships and is fairly interesting and useful for today's marketing manager. If you really enjoy Chapter's 1-5 then give 7 a go as well.

Chapter 8 -- If you recognize the names Fast Company, Business 2.0, Red Herring, or The Industry Standard, this chapter on the role of webs in building brands is not neccesary.

Chapter 9 -- Pretty good chapter on building brands beyond advertising, but only if you have a couple hours to spare. By the end of the book this chapter felt like miles 16-25 of a marathon.

Chapter 10 -- Read "The Lure of Global Brands" from the 12/99 Harvard Business Review as a substitute. More condensed and effective.

Five star (and then some) book if edited down to 200 pages.

The "leading global brand" in branding methods and approaches, David Aaker, continues to provide innovative and leading-edge contributions to the field with this latest book Brand Leadership. Building on the Aaker methodology, the authors David Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler, along with their supporting team, have produced a masterpiece.

Brand Leadership advances the previous works (eg. Managing Brand Equity- 1991; Building Strong Brands - 1996) and includes key guidelines for Branding on the Web. I find the book to be very organized and concise. It is also highly accessible and user friendly. It is quite an accomplishment and an ESSENTIAL read for those most serious and aspiring towards excellence in branding and holistic marketing.

I thought the book in particular:

1. Demonstrates that marketing is, or should be, a practice of many inter-related disciplines (or sub-disciplines if you will) and processes.

2. It articulates that the marketing discipline as a whole, can not be achieved by giving someone a "quick and dirty" template to read. It is a science as well as an art that requires experience, knowledge and judgement. The fast track to excellence in marketing does not exist via a quick technique. Marketing is a system, a holistic management process consisting of many distinct disciplines.

3. Gives an excellent map of the Brand-Relationship Spectrum.

4. Provides much needed balance and insight on addressing Branding on the Web. So concise. So accurate. So relevant.

5. Gives a wonderful and insightful view into contemporary sponsorship.

I would add that what is so relevant about the book, which is characteristic of the series particularly within the last two of the brand trilogy, is that it discusses where firms run into problems. Knowing what to avoid is as important as knowing what one needs to do. It is essential for keeping execution and strategy in alignment.

Brand Leadership is based on solid experience and research in the field. The book will go a long way in helping those managers who are wise enough to learn from it.

Highly recommend you purchase all of the books in the trilogy, as they strongly complement and support each other.

Best branding book I've read since building brand equity! Aaker and Joachimsthaler continue in the best traditions of Aaker's previous books - authoritative, practical, pertinent and readable - and all in the context of the information revolution that is shaking our world. The authors have a gift for distilling the complex issue of brand building and extension into simple - almost obvious - insights. I constantly found myself saying "Ah, I see. Why didn't I see that before!" Examples and case studies reinforce and explain throughout - they helped me learn form others experience and grasp the real world implications of the branding concepts in the book. Last, and most importantly, it's a practical guide for working marketing and business people - not just an academic exercise. These guys lead the pack by a long way when it comes to branding!

Branding books from academics do the same sorts of things, but Aaker does them better than most. First, they define consumer needs and wants. Then they show how market segments are formed. Then they elaborate vast systems for categorizing brand traits to attack the segments. Aaker's latest effort -- a whopper at 350 pages of dense marketing jargon -- presents a system that is as good as any for ordering brand traits into sensible patterns that can be more easily manipulated. Kapferer's system is less exact, while Keller's is less up-to-date. Aaker takes a long , long time to say what he means on global branding --- namely that it's right for some but not right for others. His comments on Web branding are so incisive that a lot of Web-heads might wish they'd read this book two years ago. For a broad survey of contemporary branding in a readable style, check out the new Brands in the Balance from Kevin Drawbaugh. But if it's theory you want, you can't beat Aaker.

At the core of this book is the notion that we must move from tactical to strategic brand management. Meaning, that in future brand strategies will be more aligned with the company's core strategy and culture instead of reactionary towards competition and the market. You shouldn't promise what you can't deliver, say the authors. Therefore, it only makes sense to tie in your branding to your strategic vision: the value your company as a whole delivers. This book seeks to move brand management from a local to a global focus, to get brand management aligned and integrated with the strategy of the company as a whole.

The scope of this work is broad and its style can be intimidating and academic. There's real value here, but you'll have to work for it.

In this third book in Aaker's branding trilogy the University of California professor and brand consultant documents a change away from the classic system of brand management that was created at Procter & Gamble (P&G) in the 1930's and subsequently spread to market-driven companies all over the world.

Aaker makes the case that classic brand management is being replaced by what he calls the brand leadership model. The manager in the brand leadership model emphasizes strategy as well as tactics, has a broader scope and is higher in the organization than the old-style brand manager. It focuses not only on short-term financials, but also on brand equity measures.

The authors say that this new approach results from the market complexities that have arisen out of competitive pressures channel dynamics, business environments with multiple brands, aggressive brand extensions and complex subbrand structures. This shift involves fundamental changes in organization structure, systems and culture as the authors demonstrate with case studies from companies like Polo Ralph Lauren, Virgin Airlines, Adidas, Marriott and McDonalds. These case studies make the book more readable and drive home the points that the authors make with their rigid system of definitions and processes.

Added bonuses are the chapters dealing with brand architecture, the role of sponsorship and the web, and building brands beyond advertising. Again, by using real world examples, the authors demonstrate how brand building today can benefit from many communications vehicles beyond traditional advertising so long as they make positive connections between the brand and consumers.

Brand Leadership is not a casual read, but it will reward the diligent reader with an understanding of how to deal with complex brand management issues and its linkage to business strategy. It will also help organizations that are not so market driven realize that marketing is really just the manifestation of solid business strategy.

Brand Leadership could be described as an extension of the ideas that Aaker began to formulate in Building Strong Brands. The addition that I found most useful is the inclusion of brand essence within his revised model of the Brand Identity System. Aaker's BIS offers a clear method for developing and managing brand associations according to meaningful categories.

The reason that essence (in so far as Aaker explains it) seems valuable is because it takes into account the brand's relation to those within the organisation. Authors like Nicholas Ind have also done a good job of advancing such ideas, but Aaker's approach still makes sense to me because it is simple and internal branding is not abstracted from the customer facing brand strategy.

Obviously the market has transitioned since the publication of this work, much of which relates to changing trends in social media underpinned by the internet. Nonetheless, Brand Leadership offers a solid foundation based on the well thought through research of a man who can only but be described as one of the leading thinkers in the branding world. The book also provides a good strategic method, particularly if you are trying to develop a new brand. I have found that clients who are not too familiar with brand development processes always respond favorably to the clarity that Aaker's model offers particularly since links between the business and brand strategy can be made so effectively.

Before reading Brand Leadership, I read Strategic Market Management (Strategic Market Managment). Personally I found that this book helped me understand the relationship between business and brand strategy more clearly and again it offers a clear working model.

I do brand strategy and this has provided some truly valuable industry insights; in fact it was respected as the marketing bible at one of the advertising agencies I worked.

I found this book very useful with a methodology that every company can follow. I especially appreciated the brand leadership model compared to the classic band management model, the good explanation of the concept of brand equity, the brand leadership tasks and the crm model where it is perfectly explained the relationship between the brand and the customer's self concept. It is more then a book it is a paradigm but if you don't have time don't buy the book you will not be able to read it during the week end

"I am absolutely amazed at what I have learned from David Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler! I wanted to thank them for the clarity of the book and the user friendliness. This book is a new perspective on understanding what a brand should stand for, how brands and sub-brands should co-exist and how to communicate the brand to consumers. This is something totally new!"