BrandSimple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed | Allen P. Adamson

BrandSimple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed | Allen P. Adamson | Sensible practical read...

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BrandSimple: How t...

	BrandSimple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed Allen P. Adamson Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 38 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

BrandSimple warrants serious attention

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.)

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Sensible practical read...

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.

A new book on brands worth paying for

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!

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A Must Read

BrandSimple takes a complicated subject and makes it easy, and interesting, to digest. A must for anyone interested in better understanding how to make a good brand great.

Inspiration for coming up with a simple brand idea

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.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8

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