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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
It can be better, April 16, 2009
(First of all, I do not want to give 3 stars for the sake of it but I try to be honest and hope you read my review with an open mind, thank you)
"There's another bubble hiding in our economy"
"The Brand Bubble" by John Gerzema and Ed Lebar is to remind and warn everyone that the current economy crisis might not be the last one in present days. Brands, around the world, have been inflated perceptually and financially. With the new era of technology, customers are surrounded with blogs, news, reviews, discussions, recommendations, and they are within an arm reach; this is the so-called ConsumerLand by the authors. Big brands are not invincible anymore. Brands that survive, thrive, and flourish need "energy". This book tells you the meaning and importance of "energy" and how can you foster it.
Contents
Part 1: Introduction
Chapter 1: Tulipmania and Inflated Brands
The first chapter tells you the current state of brands and how they were inflated mainly by the hands of Wall Street. Brands are less trusted, less liked, less salient, and more often perceived as low quality but the value of the brands, or the intangible assets of the company measured by the stock market, is still on the way up.
Chapter 2: Can You Say "Irresistable"?
The authors state that the new dimension that drives the brand is "energy", and the new four pillars of brand are Energized Differentiation, Relevance, Esteem, and Knowledge. There is an interesting grid of BrandAsset Valuator© or BAV which has Y-axis as Brand Strength and X-axis as Brand Stature. You can take a look at TheBrandBubble.com.
Chapter 3: Wall Street, Meet Main Street
The point of the chapter is that consumers are more sophisticated and act more like investors that they seek future benefits, want to maximise returns, accumulate information and knowledge, watch for movement, and demand transparency and accountability.
Chapter 4: The Postmodern Craving for Creativity
Creativity is a must, full stop.
Chapter 5: Welcome to ConsumerLand
The Internet and more specifically social media changes the way consumers behave
Part 2: Application
In this part, each chapter is the stage of brand development. In each chapter, the authors will explain the contents and end the chapters with 1.) Obstacle to beat back 2.) The law of energy, 3.) The new rule of brand management and 4.) Case study. I will write brief explanations without going into too much detail.
Chapter 6: Stage One-Exploration: Performing an Energy Audit
The chapter starts with and anatomy of BAV and, into details, "Energized Differentiation". The author stressed the word "Energized" by defining it as Vision, Invention, and Dynamism (VID) and how sample brands are ranked on the sprectrum.
Chapter 7: Stage Two-Distillation: Identifying the Energy Core
Gerzema and Lebar's "Energy Core" is equivalent to Jim Collins' "Core Ideology" with a slight tweak. If you have not read Jim Collins, it is the heart of an organisation, it's how to company is, have been, and will be built.
Chapter 8: Stage Three-Ignition: Creating an Energized Value Chain
"In ignition, the enterprise takes the fuel from its Energy Core and uses it to drive the brand forward." And every function can contribute to the ignition of the brand.
Chapter 9: Stage Four-Fusion: Becoming an Energy-Driven Enterprise
Fusion is when the new practices are becoming the culture of an organisation or "brand as culture". The examples of Energy-driven enterprises are Google, Whole Foods, and Nordstrom.
Chapter 10: Stage Five-Renewal: Active Listening and Constant Refreshing of Brand Meaning
The authors tell you that brands need to evolve and keep changing over the time. "Tactics are strategy, strategy is tactics"
...
In the next part, I'll compare this book to the ideal book, a book that is easy to understand, distinct, practical, credible, insightful, and provides great reading experience.
Ease of Understanding: 5/10: This book is on an abstract subject, branding, and the authors did not make it clearer. The first part, introduction, is explained nicely; and that's where the 5/10 are from. However, the author fails to elaborate the second part, application. The contents (of the second part) are not linked together beautifully. You might wonder why this "Obstacle to beat back", "The law of energy", "The new rule of management", or case study is in this chapter. And what does it really mean? What it has to do with the chapter? Why isn't it there, instead?
Distinction: 6/10: Like I mentioned earlier, the first part is written with interesting data and BAV is fascinating. There are analysis, valuation, speculation and it is a blend of marketing, management, economics, finance, etc (Ed Lebar is the former professor of economics). The second part is pretty much like other mainstream business books. The essence of the Energy Core is already defined numerous times under different names by different authors. However, the case studies are not bland; Lego, Virgin, Xerox, Mumbai Tiffin Box, and Uniqlo.
Practicality: 4/10: I had high hope in the second part, application but it did not turn out to be very practical. There is no solid step, those five stages are mere guidelines and example of successful organisations.
I'll give an example of Stage Three-Ignition, the authors tell us that Energy Core can be from any part of the organisation; Leadership, Finance, R&D, Business Model, Sales, Manufacturing, Operations, Distribution, IT and CRM, and HR. Each of these has different examples which is great. Now, the obstacle to beat back is "Management's focus is primarily on today's profitability" and the author suggested that we must look for the long-term because most of marketing (in typical companies) is just selling. Then, the chapter moves on to The Third Law of Energy: "A brand is not a place, it's a direction"; they state that brands must be verbs and positioning can no longer be static. And the new rule of brand management is "Drive the brand back through the organization"; there came Xerox case study.
The application is more like "that's the way it is".
Credibility: 7/10: The book has lots of solid and sound examples and case studies. They look very sensible and credible. However, the only drawback is BrandAsset Valuator© (BAV) because the book relies significantly on this model. Although we know the concept and basic anatomy of BAV such as VID (Vision, Invention, and Dynamism), we do not know how they are ranked and the math behind it.
Insight: 9/10: I will state again that the book has lots of examples, data, researches. Most issues are explained sufficiently (albiet not always clearly). And the greatest value of this book is cases, examples, and how they are analysed.
Reading Experience: 5/10: In the very first chapters, the book looks extremely promising but the excitement fades away due to the abstractness of the latter chapters. I do not like to compare with other books but at times, you will feel that this book is much like Jim Collins' "Good to Great" and "Built to Last". The good point of this book is that it is newer and sounds more fun (branding vs corporate management) but the drawback is that chapters are not tied together like those two books mentioned.
Overall: 6.0/10: I desperately want to like this book because it has what it takes to be great; great examples and case studies, very insightful researches, and interesting analysis. However, this book fails to synchronise the contents and stories. And it does not offer good-enough practical guidelines to readers. I will be looking forward to the next book by Gerzema and Lebar. I would say buy this book but do not have your expectation too high.
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Read a Q&A with author John Gerzema [PDF]. 
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