Brand Real: How Smart Companies Live Their Brand Promise and Inspire Fierce Customer Loyalty

Citation

Robert D. Green (2013), "Brand Real: How Smart Companies Live Their Brand Promise and Inspire Fierce Customer Loyalty", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 322-323. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-08-2012-0182

In today ' s market, many brands do not meet expectations while a few do. The critical difference between brand successful performance and under performance is the brand promise. Laurence Vincent finds that:

Real brands are excellent at fulfilling, and often exceeding, our expectations. They are so focused on keeping promises that they define the very concept of “brand” – they make tough strategic decisions about what to offer customers (and what not to offer them), they attract and retain employees who care, and they grow without straying from the sense of purpose they symbolize. It is the real brands that inspire fierce loyalty (p. 1).

In Brand Real, Laurence Vincent, who has developed strategies for leading global brands, such as Disney, Coca-Cola, MasterCard, Four Seasons Hotels, Microsoft, identifies what it takes to make and keep a brand promise. For example, “when brands fail, the culprit is always human error. From the executive suite to the front lines to the investment base, the best way to sustain a real brand is to align the people behind it with the brand promise” (p. 210). The ten-chapter book commences with misconception, misuses of certain branding assumptions, and concludes with the aligning internal branding effort to the external target consumers to avoid human error. It is an easy and fun read. Vincent uses strong theoretical bases and is supported by applicable empirical studies. However, it is far from being a “boring” and “dry” academic book. He uses his own lively case studies of highly successful consulting experiences that create engaging and exciting reading for anyone with an interest in branding.

Chapter 1 (Introduction) discusses the importance of the interrelationships between cues, expectations, and experiences in which brand identity is clearly positioned based on a meaningful brand promise, benefits and value. Chapter 2 (Winning the Memory Game) connects cues to memory (ability to recall something brand specific). Cues should be anchored to one of five brand types – destination, ingredient, service, culture, product – that are fully explained using successful strategies for each. In Chapter 3 (The Benefit of Your Brand), strategy themes are identified that are paired, or matched, to relevant benefits. The themes (and benefits) include accessibility (scale), feature focus (functionality), approach (philosophy), personality (relationship), cause (moral purpose) and lifestyle (belonging). The purpose for focusing on one theme is to clearly identify why a particular brand matters.? Chapter 4 (Leveraging Portfolio) centers on gaining equity between brands in the portfolio, e.g., using brand architecture, by connecting relationships among brands. Vincent differentiates between when there can be a strong connection (relationship) and when it is difficult to connect them. Therefore, two different strategies are discussed – a top-down approach for sub-brands to leverage strong relationships (prototype master brand) and a bottom-up approach to leverage a strong sub-brand (exemplar sub-brand).

Chapter 5 (Positioning Brands for Contexts) continues the effectiveness of a brand promise to establish contexts and to differentiate market position. Four context categories in a 2×2 metric (growth orientation versus conventionality) are presented and discussed. Vincent determines, “Every good strategy clarifies the subject of the brand, the value it provides, and the context within which it provides this value” (p. 116). Chapter 6 (Brand Attachment) links the brand promise to the self-concept to gain brand attachment. This can be achieved by linking the brand identity and consumers ' aspirational goals, i.e. an extension of themselves. Chapter 7 (Expressing the Promise) focuses on the brand narrative, e.g. wrap the promise in a story. Brand narratives contain key parts (genre, narrator, message) and relate the messaging (attract attention, inform/educate, persuade) to the needs, attitudes and behaviors of the audiences.

Chapter 8 (Naming and Identity Development) connects the promise, identity, and experience of the brand. Brand names and logos play a critical role of identity and experiences. Vincent finds that “whether represented by a name or a logo, your brand identity serves as a signature. It represents the experience your brand promises to deliver, and it should be present when the brand is performing at its best” (p. 186). Chapter 9 (The Touching Experience) focuses on the brand touch points that create the brand experiences and its character and personality. These experiences should positively stimulate what the consumers think, feel, and do. Such touch points can be prioritized and specific strategies developed by using a hierarchy approach (functional, supporting, marketing, and embellishment). Finally, Chapter 10 (Brand Inside) develops an approach for a good brand alignment program. While not ignoring the target segment, the center for the alignment effort is more on the inside of the organization – employees, partners, and investors. Vincent recommends spending twice as much effort (time and money) on the implementation as on the development. Successful implementation plans include the areas of (1) building organizational understanding, (2) recruiting well, (3) leading from the front, (4) coaching the brand, (5) recognizing the best brand experiences, and (6) developing a social network for the brand. Moving forward with future efforts for the plan, “It ' s about how the brand needs to adapt and evolve […] As employees, partners, and investors embrace the brand promise and think about how to translate it into brand promise, their shared perspective advances the brand in ways we didn ' t see when we were working tirelessly to get the brand to this point” (p. 238).

This book is recommended to those who have any interest in branding from the inexperienced to those with day-to-day brand responsibilities. The reader will learn, or be reminded from a leading brand strategist, that success that rand success begins and ends with its promise and of the critical importance of the connection between proper planning and implementation and “living” the brand inside the organization. As Laurence Vincent states, “great brands succeed by creating experiences that meet or exceed the expectations set by the brand promise […] A brand experience is realized through multiple touch points and extends into the three dimensions – how people think, what they do, and how they feel. It ' s not enough to say that you are going to deliver a great widget that will enable people to be more creative. You have to create an experience that makes this true” (p. 209).