Primal Branding: Create Zealots for Your Brand, Your Company, and Your Future [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Alan Sklar (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2006

What is it that made Starbucks an overnight sensation and separated it from other coffee house companies? Why do many products with great product innovation, perfect locations, terrific customer experiences, even breakthrough advertising fail to get the same visceral traction in the marketplace as brands like Apple and Nike? Patrick Hanlon, senior advertising executive and founder of Thinktopia, decided to find the answers. His search revealed seven definable assets that together construct the belief system that lies behind every successful brand, whether it's a product, service, city, personality, social cause, or movement.In Primal Branding, Hanlon explores those seven components, known as the primal code, and shows how to use and combine them to create a community of believers in which the consumer develops a powerful emotional attachment to the brand. These techniques, work for everyone involved in creating and selling an image-from marketing managers to social advocates to business leaders seeking to increase customer preference for new or existing products. Primal Branding presents a world of new possibility for marketers of every stripe-and the opportunity to move from being just another product on the shelf to becoming a desired and necessary part of the culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Positing that "a brand is a belief system," Hanlon, founder and CEO of "primal branding" company Thinktopia, throws a reverse spin on the 12-step addiction recovery program to trumpet his 7 steps (called "key factors") to inspire consumer addiction. His formula has vaguely mythic qualities: successful brands, he argues, come with a creation story, a creed, rituals, icons, sacred words, non-believers and a leader who's overcome stiff opposition. The similarities to religion (Hanlon prefers "culture of belief") will pique the thoughtful reader, but Hanlon's recounting of familiar business success stories (UPS's story, Lou Gerstner's turnaround of IBM) seems at odds with a book blurbed as "not the same old branding B.S." Though much of the book is the simple recasting of age-old branding tenets (Hanlon's "creed" is interchangeable with "slogan"; "icon" with "logo"), Hanlon's energetic case for thinking differently about common practices makes for a rousing read.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

..."it's exactly what many companies should be doing, but are not."

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Tantor Media; Unabridged edition (February 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400102197
• ISBN-13: 978-1400102198
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #947,535 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #77 in Books > Books on CD > Business > Sales

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just the usual case history flibbertygibbet, February 14, 2006

By 

Tom Messner "Tom" (NYC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Primalbranding: Create Zealots for Your Brand, Your Company, and Your Future (Hardcover)

Formula: author looks at successful examples of branding and back-engineers to tell you why they were successful.
I can tell you 30 books that do this (I read them all.)
This book presents, instead, a coherent theory that projects to future cases, and thus is worth imitating. Nothing wrong with stealing someone's theory if you've bought his book.
In this case, you can actually take what the author lays out and apply it your business whether is a chain of funeral parlors or amazon.com.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Why and the How of Branding, August 13, 2007

By 

John Chancellor "Mentor coach" (Spring Hill, TN) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Primalbranding: Create Zealots for Your Brand, Your Company, and Your Future (Hardcover)

Primal Branding goes much deeper than most books on branding. It is not just about logos and tag lines but about the seven crucial components which must be present to creating a brand that connects.

The seven attributes are the creation story, the creed, icons, rituals, sacred words, pagans (the opposite or those opposed to the brand) and leaders. Primal branding is not about "building a church, but creating a religion."

"Primal Branding has broken down the elements that help people feel better about a brand." All marketers are searching for ways to stand out from the crowd, to get attention, to connect. Hanlon has given us the blueprint to do just that. But as he says, "If all we needed were a recipe, everyone would be a great chef." He gives us the blueprint, but there is still the need to create the story, to make sure it resonates with everyone, the employees, the vendors and the customers. Branding is still part science, part art and a good deal of luck.

The book is well written, easy to read and filled with many examples of very successful brands - from coca-cola to lego to U2. Hanlon goes behind the scenes to uncover what made the brands successful. He gives great insight into the things we must do to make our own brands successful.

While we have the essential steps to brand our products or services, we still need to bring the emotional connection into the process. That of course is where the art and luck comes in.

If you are responsible for marketing your services, you really need to read this book.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More Than A Business-Shelf Book, January 21, 2006

By 

Robin Steele - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Primalbranding: Create Zealots for Your Brand, Your Company, and Your Future (Hardcover)

This is no "me, too" marketing book. "Primal Branding" understands and develops its theories on branding from a truly unique new perspective. The author explores how successful brands put a real value behind their companies and their products, making them matter in meaningful ways.

Stripped of the cynical, manipulative message of so many books on the marketing shelf, this is real anthropology - getting down into the roots of our general humanity, figuring out why we do or don't identify with bits of our complex surroundings. This book is clear, concise, moving, and in the end deeply enlightening.

From the discovery of "Lucy" to LegoLand, the author invites us to dig with him through a treasure chest of anecdotes, insights and looks at the "primal codes" to which we all answer. The emotional content of a business transaction - what draws us in, or what alienates us - is at the heart of all commerce, because it's at the heart of all life.

Mr. Hanlon has written a fun-to-read book that is not just about branding or marketing. It's about how societies work - how we know who we are - and the uses and perils of primal identity.