Читать книгу Brand Admiration - Weiss Allen M. - Страница 6

The business world does not lack for books on branding. But Brand Admiration is different in several game-changing ways.

First, we develop a novel, integrated and overarching perspective on the fundamental goals of brand management and how we achieve them. We call this perspective the brand admiration management system. This system (Figure P.1) provides a road map for building, strengthening, and leveraging brand admiration over time, in ways that produce value to customers and companies alike. We regard brand admiration as the most desired state of a brand’s health. Unlike other books that primarily provide a set of to do’s, we provide an overarching system whose components are connected and integrated. In this way, our book offers the theoretical coherence that makes its set of “to do’s” highly compelling.

Figure P.1 The Brand Admiration Management System

Second, we directly link brand admiration to the brand’s value to companies. Building, strengthening, and leveraging brand admiration is, we argue, the most important and foundational objective of branding. Using decades of research in marketing and psychology, we emphasize three critical classes of benefits that characterize admired brands. Such brands enable, entice, and enrich customers. These three classes of benefits, called the 3Es for short, have an exponential effect on customers’ relationship with a brand. They build brand admiration by enhancing customers’ trust in, love of, and respect for the brand. This brand admiration, in turn, provides value to the firm. We describe some important psychological processes in Chapter 3 that explain why the 3Es create value for customers (and hence companies).

Third, we describe how companies can build, strengthen, and leverage this value. Rather than focusing on quick fixes, and tactics to enhance fourth-quarter earnings, we examine forces responsible for efficient short-term competitive advantages that also build (Chapters 4, 5, and 6), strengthen (Chapter 7), and leverage (Chapters 8, 9, and 10) brand admiration over the long term. When a short-term focus and long-term goals are aligned, brands enjoy short-term and long-term success. History is replete with examples of brands that have been market leaders for decades, generations, or even a century or more (Chapter 2).

Fourth, we propose an innovative way of thinking about brand architecture design (Chapter 10). We address how various businesses and products within the company’s portfolio are branded to deliver to a company the optimal financial, asset-building, and organizational benefits. We also present a novel and implementable metric for measuring brand equity (Chapter 11) and a set of dashboard metrics that help managers diagnose what’s driving (or not driving) successful brand performance (Chapter 12).

Fifth, our framework is not based on mere assertions. Nor is it based purely on a particular brand example. Instead, it is grounded in decades of theoretical and empirical research from us and other academics in marketing and psychology. In particular, our framework derives from research on fundamental human needs, goals, emotions, and motivations, as well as in empirical research that supports needs, goals, emotions, and motivations as drivers of brand admiration.

Finally, our framework is generalizable. It is equally applicable to the introduction of new brands and the management of existing brands. It is appropriate for brands in different industries and for both B2B and B2C brands. Brand managers, CMOs, CEOs, and employees who work for product brands, service brands, celebrity brands, country brands, institution brands, and NGO brands can all use our framework.

We hope you will see that the ideas in this book are novel, actionable, and strong – indeed, game changing in driving the value of your brand to your customers and your company.