Customer Reviews

BrandSimple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed

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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.

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.)

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.

The book sounded good from all of these reviews, and it isn't a terrible book, don't get me wrong, however it dragged on forever about the same "keep it simple" ideas. It got old after the first 3 chapters.

You'll be bombarded with case study after case study, and you'll forget exactly what the author is trying to tell you. Its just overly stuffed with examples -- the book would have been just fine with half of the fluffy content it provided. While the examples were good, it came down to being too much. By chapter 8 I was passing up whole pages about companies and whatever their simple idea was that worked for them.

As other reviews have mentioned, I think the most useful chapter of the book was #9, where the author summed everything up into 10 ideas without any case studies involved.

If you need this book as a reference for simple brand ideas, there are plenty of examples in this to fulfill your needs. But if you're looking for a process or for answers to your marketing needs, this will not be it. It is purely example based.

Simple ideas sell best, whether you're managing brands or people. So
critical to success today, yet too often ignored. In BrandSimple you'll
learn how and why simple ideas break through the clutter and make for
powerful and profitable brands. It's a wonderfully interesting book, full of
relevant examples and very practical advice.

In the marketing section of any book store, you'll be confronted with a bonanza of books on branding. If the subject is new to you, start with David Aaker. But if you are ready for some of the newest thinking on the topic, this is a good addition to your collection. Adamson combines good writing with excellent insights and examples. His book is highly informative and, simply put, a good read. Certainly worth the price of admission!

As a senior marketing executive I read a lot of books about branding, all trying to outdo one another with complexity and jargon. Adamson cuts to the chase with tried and true simplicity. His breadth of experience allows him to offer example after example of branding case studies, with an insider's insight and a look into problems that many brands face and can learn from.

As the owner of a small business, I wanted to understand branding to see if it would be helpful to my business. BrandSimple was a fabulous introduction; it opened my eyes to ideas I need to understand and use.

The other three books I bought were not as helpful. The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier seems to have been written for people in the branding business; the most useful parts of it were the glossary and recommended reading sections. I would describe What Is Branding? by Matthew Healey and Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler, which are both beautiful books, as glossaries with pictures.

I thought it was a fairly valuable read. The thesis is really simple. To create a strong brand you must find a simple idea that is differentiated and relevant. You then build the brand by focusing on specific points in the customer journey, and craft the brand interactions to send signals that will shape the perceptions of the consumer.

The weak parts of the book were that some of the ideas seemed too simple or obvious, and it was repetitive at times. I loved the analogy which compared the mind to a computer desktop and brands to computer files. The more associations and images you have of the brand, the larger the file appears when you click on it. The brand must say something relevant and meaningful to get you to save as.

The coolest thing I learned was that all the pencils at BP are made out of recycled plastic coffe cups, which I didn't know was possible. Overall it is a good book to read if you are interested in the fundamentals of building a brand.

Branding is not simple - it takes skill and nuturing that Adamson underscores in his book. As consumers become harder and harder to reach through multiple devices, brand managers need to focus on the basics then move on to more creative strategies. Allen Adamson leads us on that path. Nicely done.

Steve Barlow Senior Advertising Analyst - Prudential Equity Group, LLC.