Brand Real
How Smart Companies Live Their Brand Promise and Inspire Fierce Customer Loyalty
By: Laurence Vincent
Published: March 28, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 257 pages
ISBN-10: 0814416764
ISBN-13: 978-0814416761
Publisher: AMACOM
"Real brands make and keep a promise, and they deliver simple-but-powerful experiences", writes brand strategist Laurence Vincent, in his instructive and real world grounded book Brand Real: How Smart Companies Live Their Brand Promise and Inspire Fierce Customer Loyalty. The author shares his brand manifesto on what it takes to make and then keep a brand promise, and offers practical and proven advice for making that brand promise a reality that builds long term customer loyalty.
Laurence Vincent understands that it takes hard work and a powerful commitment to create and maintain a real brand. The author points out that many brand managers are not truly aware of what it means to continue the discipline necessary to develop a brand. For many companies, a brand isn't their technique for product and service differentiation. Instead of building a solid brand that keeps its promises, company leaders resort to what amounts to window dressing. Laurence Vincents demonstrates that a brand must stand for something, or it isn't a real brand. That same real brand will make a firm promise, and then keep that word by delivering on everything that was promised and more. Everything a company does is simply an extension and support for that brand promise.
Laurence Vincent (photo left) recognizes that companies face unprecedented challenges in today's highly competitive marketplace. The author points out that many companies respond to that challenge in the wrong way. Instead of taking a stand with a real brand, they tinker with logos and names. Laurence Vincent offers firm evidence that the correct approach is to make and keep a promise to create an extraordinary experience. That is what the author's manifesto to create a real brand is all about.
To demonstrate how to create and maintain a real brand, laurence Vincent shares the following brand strategies:
* Forget logos and names as a solution as they are not the brand
* Understand how customers remember and recall the brand
* Discover proven and fresh ways to make and refine the brand promise
* Create brand architecture that grows while maintaining bonds with customers
* Position brands properly even in competitive markets
* Understand the mind of customers and how they attach to brands
* use the power of storytelling to communicate the brand promise
* Understand what brand identity really means beyond names and logos
For me, the power of the book is how Laurence Vincent provides a brand promise for his book and delivers on that promise. He pledges his manifesto as one of creating real brands that provide extraordinary experience. Unlike many books that promise much, but deliver less, that is not a problem here. Laurence Vincent offers a complete strategy for creating what he calls a real brand. He presents a blueprint for brands that is both effective and suited to the brand promise itself.
Laurence Vincent backs up his real brand strategic initiative with real world examples of real brands in action. He also provides cautionary examples of brands that failed to be real, or meet their brand promise obligation. The author also demonstrates how the latest research in brain science and market research support the concept of a real brand. Through a combination of case studies, brain science, and market research, Laurence Vincent presents a compelling case for his real brand principle. Acting on that evidence, and his own brand experience, the author presents a step by step, repeatable system for creating a real brand that truly delivers on its promise.
I highly recommend the very practical and research based book Brand Real: How Smart Companies Live Their Brand Promise and Inspire Fierce Customer Loyalty by Laurence Vincent, to any brand managers who are serious creating real brands that deliver on their promise of an extraordinary brand experience. This book will place your brand on the right track for building a real brand that is memorable and powerful in the marketplace.
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