The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design - Softcover

Neumeier, Marty

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0321348109 ISBN 13: 9780321348104

Publisher: New Riders, 2005

Synopsis

THE BRAND GAP is the first book to present a unified theory of brand-building.  Whereas most books on branding are weighted toward either a strategic or creative approach, this book shows how both ways of thinking can unite to produce a “charismatic brand”—a brand that customers feel is essential to their lives. In an entertaining two-hour read you’ll learn:

· the new definition of brand
· the five essential disciplines of brand-building
· how branding is changing the dynamics of competition
· the three most powerful questions to ask about any brand
· why collaboration is the key to brand-building
· how design determines a customer’s experience
· how to test brand concepts quickly and cheaply
· the importance of managing brands from the inside
· 220-word brand glossary

From the back cover:
Not since McLuhan’s THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE has a book compressed so many ideas into so few pages. Using the visual language of the boardroom, Neumeier presents the first unified theory of branding—a set of five disciplines to help companies bridge the gap between brand strategy and customer experience. Those with a grasp of branding will be inspired by the new perspectives they find here, and those who would like to understand it better will suddenly “get it.” This deceptively simple book offers everyone in the company access to “the most powerful business tool since the spreadsheet.”

About this title

About the Author

Marty Neumeier's professional mission is to "incite business revolution by unleashing the power of design thinking." He does this by writing books, conducting workshops, and speaking internationally about the power of brand, innovation, and design. His bestselling "whiteboard" books include THE BRAND GAP, ZAG, and THE DESIGNFUL COMPANY. His video, MARTY NEUMEIER'S INNOVATION WORKSHOP, combines highlights from all three books into a hands-on learning experience. Marty serves as Director of Transformation at Liquid Agency, and divides his writing time between California and southwest France.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

What a Brand Isn't

Let's start with a clean slate. If we wipe away some of the misconceptions about brand, we can make more room for its truths.

Ready?

First of all, a brand is not a logo. The term LOGO is short for LOGOTYPE, design-speak for a trademark made from a custom-lettered word (LOGOS is Greek for WORD). The term logo caught on with people because it sounds cool, but what people really mean is a trademark, whether the trademark is a logo, symbol, monogram, emblem, or other graphic device. IBM uses a monogram, for example, while Nike uses a symbol. Both are trademarks, but neither are logos. Clear? What really matters here is that a logo, or any other kind of trademark, is not the brand itself. It's merely a symbol for it.

Second, a brand is not a corporate identity system. An identity system is a 20th-century construct for controlling the use of trademarks and trade-dress elements on company publications, advertisements, stationery, vehicles, signage, and so on. Fifty years ago, lithography was the communication technology du jour; identity manuals were designed to dictate the sizes, colors, spacing, and architecture of the printed page. Today there's still a need for identity manuals and the visual consistency they bring. But consistency alone does not create a brand.

Finally, a brand is not a product. Marketing people often talk about managing their brands, but what they usually mean is managing their products, or the sales, distribution, and quality thereof. To manage a brand is to manage something much less tangible—an aura, an invisible layer of meaning that surrounds the product.

So what exactly is a brand?

A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or company. It's a GUT FEELING because we're all emotional, intuitive beings, despite our best efforts to be rational. It's a PERSON'S gut feeling, because in the end the brand is defined by individuals, not by companies, markets, or the so-called general public. Each person creates his or her own version of it. While companies can't control this process, they can influence it by communicating the qualities that make this product different than that product. When enough individuals arrive at the same gut feeling, a company can be said to have a brand. In other words, a brand is not what YOU say it is. It's what THEY say it is. . A brand is a kind of Platonic ideal—a concept shared by society to identify a specific class of things. To use Plato's example, whenever we hear the word "horse" we visualize a majestic creature with four legs, a long tail, and a mane falling over a muscular neck, an impression of power and grace, and the knowledge that a person can ride long distances on its back. Individual horses may differ, but in our minds we still recognize their common "horseness." Looked at from the other side of the equation, when we add up the parts that make a horse, the total is distinctive enough so that we think HORSE, not COW or Bicycle.

A brand, like Plato's horse, is an approximate— yet distinct—understanding of a product, service, or company. To compare a brand with its competitors, we only need to know what makes it different. Brand management is the management of differences, not as they exist on data sheets, but as they exist in the minds of people.

Why is Brand Suddenly Hot?

The idea of brand has been around for at least 5,000 years. So why is it such a big deal now?

Because as our society has moved from an economy of mass production to an economy of mass customization, our purchasing choices have multiplied. We've become information-rich and time-poor. As a result, our old method of judging products—by comparing features and benefits—no longer works. The situation is exacerbated by competitors who copy each others' features as soon as they're introduced, and by advances in manufacturing that make quality issues moot.

Today we base our choices more on symbolic attributes. What does the product look like? Where is it being sold? What kind of people buy it? Which "tribe" will I be joining if I buy it? What does the cost say about its desirability? What are other people saying about it? And finally, who makes it? Because if I can trust the maker, I can buy it now and worry about it later. The degree of trust I feel towards the product, rather than an assessment of it's features and benefits, will determine whether I'll buy this product or that product.

InVeriSign We Trust

The history of American currency provides a good demonstration of how trust relates to branding. After the Revolutionary War, when paper money was reduced to a fortieth of its previous value, gold and silver were the only types of currency people could trust. It was nearly a hundred years before people were willing to accept Silver Certificates as a substitute for the real thing, even though the new bills were backed by metal reserves. It took another hundred years before we were ready to accept Federal Reserve Notes as a substitute for Silver Certificates. These weren't backed by reserves at all, but by pure faith in the brand called America. Now we've learned to trust in a system of credit cards for a large percentage of our transactions. Will we soon be ready to accept international cybercurrency as an improvement on credit cards? Sure, if we can trust it.

Trust creation is a fundamental goal of brand design. The complex flourishes and intricate images employed in the design of the Silver Certificate were no accident—they were conscious attempts to encourage trust in what was little more than a symbol for money.

The concept of trust is equally important when we trade our currency—whether metal, paper, plastic, or cyber—for goods and services. Trust is the ultimate shortcut to a buying decision, and the bedrock of modern branding.

What's Your Brand Worth?

Can you place a dollar value on your company's brand? You can certainly try, and for some companies the estimates are astonishing. The brand consultancy Interbrand routinely publishes a list of the top 100 global brands by valuation. The leader today is Coca-Cola with a brand worth of nearly $70 billion, which accounts for more than 60% of its market capitalization. Halfway down the list is Xerox with a brand valuation of $6 billion—a whopping 93% of its market cap.

If a company's brand value is such a large part of its assets, why isn't it listed on the balance sheet? Good question. But while companies ponder this, they're already using brand values as tools to obtain financing, put a price on licensing deals, evaluate mergers and acquisitions, assess damages in litigation cases, and justify the price of their stock.

There's an old saying in business, "What gets measured gets done." As brands become more measurable, companies are focusing on ways to increase their value.

One way is to follow the example of currency: Use design to encourage trust.

Brand Happens

So far, the eye-opening valuations on Interbrand's list have happened as much by chance as by design. While the figures undoubtedly represent a huge investment in time, energy, money, and study, they're mostly a side effect of caring more about sales, service, quality, marketing, and the myriad other things that occupy a business. For most of us, brand happens while we're doing something else.

But what if you could isolate brand from those other endeavors? What if you could study it, measure it, manage it, and influence it, rather than just let it happen?

This is precisely what companies are trying to do. They're appointing brand managers, who are building brand departments, which are populated by brand strategists, who are armed with brand research. What they're discovering, however, is that it takes more than strategy to build a brand. It takes strategy and creativity together.

Which brings us to the premise of this book.

The Brand Gap

Strategy and creativity, in most companies, are sep...

Edition details

• Publisher: New Riders
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0321348109
• ISBN 13: 9780321348104
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 208