Customer Reviews

The Breakaway Brand: How Great Brands Stand Out

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am a small businessowner and have read a number of books on branding. I am always on the look out for books about branding that: 1) offer insights into and analysis of companies that have created strong brands, 2) suggest strategies and ideas that I can apply to my own company, and/or 3) discuss successful branding makeovers.

The "Breakaway Brand" did none of these things. This book was full of the most basic, general, and surface analysis of companies. I'm not an expert on brands by any means, but I could have come up with some of the "insights" that are offered in this book.

The book claims to "provide secrets behind 50 of the world's most succesesful brands." Not only are there no real secrets shared, but the same companies are analyzed and used as examples over and over again. If you read business magazines or books, or read the major business newspaper headlines, you probably have read most of the analysis and information about the well known companies from this book: Volkswagen, IBM, Coca-Cola, Silk Soy Milk, Jet Blue, Southwest, Royal Carribbean, Target, Apple, Dell.

After a while I started highlighting passages that were particularly unhelpful. Here's one example:

"Breakaway campaigns like Nike's, Apple's, and Volkswagen's have something else in common: teamwork. Great campaigns are a team sport--they require a partnership between a brand owner, all of its divisions, and its agency to create great campaigns. Just as important, it takes a CMO and CEO with the vision, guts, and determination to take risks, to innovate instead of imitate, and to demand that their organization and advertising agency deliver a breakaway campaign."

Another example of completely unhelpful "insights." Here are some examples they provide as "the economic levers of breakaway brand campaigns:"

-Increases in brand awareness
-Increases in advertising awareness
-Sales gain
-Increased brand loyalty
-Increased margins
-Strong trade loyalty
-Increased positive press
-Free marketplace "buzz"

Don't waste your money on this book. Read Marc Gobe's "Emotional Branding" if you're looking for a well-written book, written by an innovator in the business of branding, that provides insights into and behind-the-scenes stories of some of the most successful brands.

Breakaway brands is a new business tool for Arnold Communications (Kelly's and Silverstein's employer), posing as a book about branding.

I wouldn't give much credence to some of those five-star reviews - they smell like spam: Reviewer Steven Swanson is the Managing Partner of Arnold's St. Louis office, and the anonymous BookReader ("The Breakaway Brand" is far and away one of the best books on brands available today") also sounds affiliated with the company.

The Breakaway Brand isn't any worse than other ad agency vanity titles, but it breaks absolutely no new ground. Unless you enjoy wasting time and money on a 272 page ad, skip this one.

Typically, you don't expect a non-fiction book that you are reading to learn something of value to be enjoyable to read, but "The Breakaway Brand" manages to keep you engaged while imparting important facts and lessons. The brands mentioned in the book are a part of your every day life, and therefore of interest.

If you own a business and are looking for a way to make your product stand out, or if you work in marketing and want tips on how to break out your clients, this is the book for you!

After reading The Breakaway Brand this fall, I have made it required reading for my marketing students. With each chapter guiding readers on the principles of effective branding, students are learning the success stories of marketing greats like Nike, Apple, Absolut, and Ben & Jerry's. This book makes all the pieces of the marketing puzzle come together - from naming a product, to celebrity endorsements to even street team marketing.

I've read a number of marketing and communications books in my career, and often my eyes glaze over by the third chapter. I didn't find that happening with this book. Its easy and engaging language and straightforward approach to uncovering a brand's truth was refreshing. We consumers know the great brands out there, because somehow they've established a personal connection with us - something we can't always name. This book helped explain the "how" and "why" of those connections.

This would be a very useful text for college and grad students in marketing and communications - many of the brand references are relevant to them.

I'm a psychologist and writer who rarely reads "business" books. But I've always been fascinated by how some products and companies-like Altoids, Amazon.com, Apple and a dozen other examples-break away from the competition and achieve a special and unique status. This well-researched and very well-written book help me understand how and why this intriguing phenomenon works. But it also helped me in an unexpected way. As a psychotherapist and executive coach to CEOs and top executives, it offered a number of new ideas and insights about some of the things individual people can do (including myself, I might add) to separate themselves from their peers.

Almost everyone thinks they are an advertising and branding expert. Every branding book author offers a simple formula for success. Yet very few brands achieve breakaway brand status like Nike, Apple, VW, Absolut, Southwest, Jet Blue, Fed Ex, UPS, Altoids or the Boston Red Sox. This book offers close up insights into how these really great brands got built. Readers truly driven to do better branding will find this read unique and helpful. No fluff here. The Breakaway Brand is a smart read for any marketing or advertising student trying to take it to a higher level.

If you are interested in marketing this is the book for you. Whether you are the president of a Fortune 500 company or a business student, The Breakaway Brand: How Great Brands Stand Out will make you smarter about marketing. The authors explain how great brands stand out from the rest. And it's never luck, but instead smart people taking intelligent risks. The book brings you into the Board Room and in a breezy, easy to read manner explains the sophisticatd process of building a breakaway brand.

"The Breakaway Brand" is far and away one of the best books on brands available today. With great insight and relevant, current stories, the authors talk about why great brands stand out. Many brand books are too general to be useful, while this book backs up its content with facts, figures, and specific examples. It covers topics rarely addressed in brand books, such as measurable results of great brand campaigns and the impact of the CEO on branding success. This book is a pleasure to read, too -- so even someone with a casual interest in brand marketing will get a lot out of it. This is the real deal -- read the reviews from industry pros and you'll see why.

This is a book which carries a good flow for light reading. Not a break-away book about brand mantras. But the examples are quite impressive and help in understanding how brands have been successful in the past.