41 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chock full of stuff you can use to make you better at your job, November 14, 2006
Being the founder of a creative consultancy, I face the difficult challenge of differentiating my client's products and services everyday. Most of the books I've read on this topic are rather theoretical and, therefore, not very useful. Allen Adamson's "BrandSimple" is quite the opposite. It is chock full of stuff I can use to make me better at my job. It illustrates how a simple brand idea can cut through the clutter like a hot knife through butter. It also provides valuable techniques to help you get there. Real life case studies from clients such as GE, FedEx and Baby Einstein beautifully illustrate the points made in the book. I would recommend it to both marketing professionals and students alike. In fact, I have put "BrandSimple" on the required reading list for the graduate course I teach at Columbia University.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
44 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
BrandSimple warrants serious attention, November 1, 2006
Books about brands and branding come across my desk all the time. All are well-intentioned, most have some wisdom to impart, many are simplistic, and few have the focus or wide enough range of experience to warrant serious attention.
Allen Adamson's "BrandSimple" warrants serious attention.
Adamson is Managing Director of Landor Associates, one of the pioneers in brand development that is part of the Young & Rubicam family. With brand (Lever) and ad agency (Ogilvy & Mather, Ammirati & Puris, DMB&B) experience, and client involvement at Landor alone with Citigroup, Diageo, IBM, P&G and Pfizer, among others, Adamson is in a position to provide an insider's perspective. And he delivers one.
"BrandSimple" combines theory and case study to amply illustrate the book's subtitle: "How the best brands keep it simple and succeed." The anecdotes are fascinating and instructive, and the descriptions of some of the tools available to brand marketers open new ways of evaluating brand performance.
(OK, it's a little self-promoting --others have similar tools to Y&R's BrandAsset Valuator and Landor's Brand Journey mapping. But Adamson gives clear explanations of these and other processes. Understanding them will help any reader approach a brand, or the process of branding, better.)
The highlights are in the details. The almost off-hand observation that, "When a brand has a higher degree of relevance than differentiation, the brand has become a commodity." Common sense to a brand professional? Of course. But how often do we overlook common sense when caught up in the day-to-day crunch?
Adamson also pointedly differentiates between a brand, and branding -- the latter being "how you go about establishing your brand's differentiated meaning in people's minds. . . the transmission of the idea" that defines the brand itself. Branding has to do with logos, packaging, and so on. The BrandSimple concept has to do with clearly defining that differentiated meaning in the first place -- the critical step too many brand managers don't fully appreciate.
Adamson poses series of questions throughout the book that constitute a must-have checklist for any brand marketer. To take them out of context here would make them sound simplistic. Take my word, when used properly, those questions will help you define your brand, your marketing objectives and your success on a whole new plane.
(As published in the e-letter Mayer On Marketing, 11/1/06; copyright 2006 EPM Communications, Inc.)
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
33 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Inspiration for coming up with a simple brand idea, October 30, 2006
One of the most challenging (and sometimes quite frustrating) aspects of branding is coming up with the big idea on which everything is based. This big idea needs to meet a long list of criteria including being differentiated, relevant, applicable to internal and external audiences, emotionally engaging and, most importantly, simple so that everyone will "get it". Getting to simple is anything but simple.
But Allen Adamson's book BrandSimple does show how to simplify the process of getting to a big idea. It inspires you to pull out a pad and pencil and get to work on cracking that brand problem you've been struggling with for weeks. Allen cites lots of examples of the brand ideas of well established brands like GE and FedEx as well as fast-growing one like LeapFrog, Baby Einstein and BlackBerry. I found the stories behind the creation of the brand idea for many of these brands very interesting. The different brand ideas themselves led to new ideas for the problem I was working on.
My biggest learning from the book is to completely stop the use of marketing jargon (which as a consultant I tend to use a lot) and always strive for the simplest and most elegant solution - visual or verbal. Allen makes a very persuasive argument for why anything that is not simple is doomed to fail. And with the resounding success of brands rooted in simplicity like Google and Apple, I couldn't agree more.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
