Customer Reviews

Legendary Brands: Unleashing the Power of Storytelling to Create a Winning Market Strategy

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

 

 

There are several excellent books on the subject of brand management and this is one of the best. Vincent selects several of what he calls "legendary brands" and explains how each flourished through a combination of storytelling and a "winning market strategy." These brands include Levi's, Starbucks Coffee, Absolut Vodka, Apple Computer, Nike, and Kistler Vineyards. Vincent insists that legendary brands do not depend on size, tenure, quality, and geography and reach as well as advertising and design don't matter. What does? "A Legendary Brand is different from other brands because it projects a sense of celebrity within its consumer base. It takes on a human persona, and attracts a following in much the same way that human celebrities do." Moreover, Legendary Brands "stand for concepts, values, and objects that consumers use to interpret meaning in their own lives." That is, they represent, indeed manifest the personality of the consumer. As a result, a Legendary Brand "allows consumers to order themselves in social, cultural, and personal space." Each "is a story handed down for generations among a people, and popularly believed to have a historical basis, although not verifiable."

Vincent introduces and then explains what he calls a Brand Mythology System. It has four components: a worldview comprised of a set of sacred beliefs, a brand agent, brand narrative (or "story"), and consumer participation through a special set of of consumer feedback activities. Frequent patrons of a local Starbucks, for example, have the same shared values as those who belong to a private club.

Some of the most interesting ideas are provided in Chapter 10 as Vincent examines different types of brand agents which can be persons (e.g. Hugh Hefner, Martha Stewart, and Colonel Sanders), places (e.g. Disney theme park, Sesame Street, and Augusta National Golf Club), or things (e.g. Kate Spade handbag, Mont Blanc pen, and Rolex timepiece). In each instance, the agent connects the brand with the consumer through the power of positive association: wearing Michael Jordan's brand of basketball footwear, entering the Magic Kingdom, or wearing golfwear bearing the Masters logo. Obviously, there are few Legendary Brands. However, those responsible for managing new or emerging brands as well as those attempting to revitalize established brands can learn much of value from Vincent's book by understanding his various concepts and then following the guidelines he suggests.

Those who share my high regard for Vincent's book are urged to check out Stephen Denning's Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations, Brands: The New Wealth Creators co-edited by Susannah Hart and John Murphy, and Bernd Schmitt Experiential Marketing: How to Get Customers to Sense, Feel, Think, Act, and Relate to Your Company and Brands.

What makes a brand become the stuff of legend? Author and consultant Laurence Vincent says it's the power of a good story. Vincent, whose specialty is forging alliances between consumer brands and entertainment properties, presents an interesting parallel between marketing and storytelling that makes sense in today's increasingly cluttered media environment. Vincent introduces you to the basics of myth and storytelling. He explains how these concepts apply to marketing strategy and offers plenty of real-world examples and case studies to illustrate his points. Except for predicting the coming integration of advertising and content (it's been around for decades), Vincent's book is full of fresh insight. We from getAbstract recommend this book to brand managers and marketing executives who want to learn how to turn their brands into powerful icons. Legendary Brands takes the reader step by step through the process - just like any good story.

Harley, Kodak, Nike, Apple, Linux. The secret to the phenomenal success of these brands is the "narrative" that communicates the underlying brand philosophy, one that engages and inspires consumers to use and stay loyal to these "legendary brands".

A slew of pages is devoted to theorizing about these brands' narrative structure and occasionally the pseudo-scientific verbiage is a little distracting (e.g., "Brand mythology acts upon the cognitive orientation centers of the brain in much the same way that religion and other deeply held philosophical beliefs do").

Yet, all this could have been easily overlooked by the fastidious reader, but without a more organized analysis of how these seemingly facile narratives were conceived, attained, and then maintained by our "legendary" brands, the book falls short of its expectations. Some discussion of the evidence, even anecdotal, would have made this 5 star material although it may still be an interesting collectible for the insightful magazine style discussions of successful branding endeavours.

Laurence Vincent skillfully sets the stage on the amazing power of brand stories, how storytelling can be done with brands and how to mine stories from your own brands.

The first half of the book is an excellent "history lesson" in brands like Apple, Nike and others and how they proficiently leverage their brand equity and story. The second half of the book is a "tutorial" in how to discover, mine and bring to light your brand's story.

Truly an amazing and interesting book. Very insightful. The author is intelligent, articulate and easy to grasp. He makes a very strong case for realizing the power of brand stories and engaging consumers in new, compelling and oftentimes utterly unique ways.

This is one of the few books (of the many I have read about storytelling in marketing) that provides a good explanation of "Why" storytelling is a powerful tool and "How" is works. I like that Vincent evidently has carried out a sound piece of research before writing this book.

I particularly like that he makes the point that not only do customers tell each other stories, they also live trough story themselves and build and support their own life-story through their consumption: "consumers in the post-modern world seek a narrative (or narratives) upon which to base their identity" (p. 9), "We define ourselves, our lives, and our well being by what we consume." (p. 11). Essentially this makes it clear that consumers exhibit what I would call sense making through consumption, and Vincent recognises that.

I highly commend this book for anyone who considers exploring the powers of using storytelling in their marketing strategy, since it describes well how to create a brand narrative. I do however personally believe that building a brand narrative is just one way of using storytelling in marketing, there are other approaches to explore too.

Maybe you can't explain the creation and management of legendary brands--but if you can, Mr. Vincent didn't. Or, if he did, he used a LOT of extra words to make his explanation fit into a book. "The objective of every advertiser is to implicitly prescribe acts of consumer behavior (e.g., "But the product!"). Legendary Brands, however dole out the prescription through story. These brands do not yell at the consumer to buy, buy, buy. They instead engage them in a narrative that makes the consumer want to buy because they identify with narrative components." -from page 35.
That sounds good to me. But that was about it.
He continues throughout the book to equate a person's Faith with branding. Again, I can see some similarities, but his attempt to "explain" the transcendent by use of the eminent is incongruent unless you believe that there is nothing but the eminent. He would have you believe that your deepest beliefs are simply responses to someone's effective branding attempts.
This book should set better with cynics and agnostics. I'm not reselling my copy-I don't want to spread his gospel.