[.ca] Brand Leadership: Building Assets In an Information Economy (ISBN 0684839245)

From Amazon.com:
Build it ... and they'll come. Nope, not necessarily, not anymore. It's a crowded, crazy market out there, and no matter how fabulous your product or service, there's bound to be someone else delivering something pretty close. The solution? Take your product or service and ... brand it! Though the idea has been around in management circles since the late 1980s, brand equity has never been more important than it is now. In Brand Leadership, David Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler set out to guide managers to the next level of the brand revolution. Building and managing brands, though obviously vital and necessary steps in the process, do not make up the whole picture of the successful development of a brand. What is needed is strategic brand leadership. Implementing this kind of leadership, Aaker and Joachimsthaler insist, requires a radical shift in an organization's culture, its structure, and its systems. In their densely packed but accessible book, they outline what this shift is all about, and discuss the important components of brand leadership: defining and elaborating a brand identity; designing the brand's architecture to achieve clarity, synergy, and leverage; building a brand beyond the obvious route of advertising by incorporating such aspects as sponsorship and the role of the Internet; and organizing the entire company around global brand leadership as opposed to merely the creation of a global brand. To support and demonstrate their ideas, the authors conducted hundreds of corporate case studies throughout Europe and the U.S. Inspiring and useful tales of such brand-focused and brand-recognized companies as Virgin, L.L. Bean, Nike, Adidas, and MasterCard are told in detail, and they touch on a host of other companies and brands to add texture to the lessons. As is obvious from these examples, achieving an effective brand leadership strategy requires awareness, understanding, passion, and a heck of a lot of work. But in today's enormously competitive brand environment, the rewards can be--and are--well worth the effort. Brand Leadership provides invaluable advice for anyone looking to focus and direct that effort toward a profitable and lasting result. --S. Ketchum

Great book, if you have the time:
I'll save you some effort. Read the first five chapters of this book and stop. Aaker is the king of brand equity and successful strategies for organizing and developing brands but he also has a knack for being a bit long-winded. Don't get me wrong. The guy's a genius and the world of marketing is much the better for having him (and Joachimsthaler) around. However, in Management Communications at Business School they teach you to know your audience. There's a reason most business books are 160-220 pages. Business leaders don't have time to spend 12-15 hours reading texts. Aaker ignores this fact when offering the 330-page "Brand Leadership." That being said it's a great book for the frameworks and approaches it provides. Aaker truly is one of the elite few that really rises above the clutter in offering marketing insights to today's manager. Unfortunately like Michael Porter with Strategy, he feels that this level of insight affords the right to pontificate beyond the attention span of most managers. His theories on brand identity, brand architecture, and brand equity are invaluable though and for this reason the book is well worth the money and time. Particularly outstanding is the chapter on Brand Architecture which provides a stark contrast to the "focus" theories of Ries & Trout. Shortcuts: Chapter 6 -- Discusses Nike-Adidas market dynamics. Least interesting chapter in the book. Chapter 7 -- Addresses sponsorships and is fairly interesting and useful for today's marketing manager. If you really enjoy Chapter's 1-5 then give 7 a go as well. Chapter 8 -- If you recognize the names Fast Company, Business 2.0, Red Herring, or The Industry Standard, this chapter on the role of webs in building brands is not neccesary. Chapter 9 -- Pretty good chapter on building brands beyond advertising, but only if you have a couple hours to spare. By the end of the book this chapter felt like miles 16-25 of a marathon. Chapter 10 -- Read "The Lure of Global Brands" from the 12/99 Harvard Business Review as a substitute. More condensed and effective. Five star (and then some) book if edited down to 200 pages.

The Essential Branding Mentor:
The "leading global brand" in branding methods and approaches, David Aaker, continues to provide innovative and leading-edge contributions to the field with this latest book Brand Leadership. Building on the Aaker methodology, the authors David Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler, along with their supporting team, have produced a masterpiece. Brand Leadership advances the previous works (eg. Managing Brand Equity- 1991; Building Strong Brands - 1996) and includes key guidelines for Branding on the Web. I find the book to be very organized and concise. It is also highly accessible and user friendly. It is quite an accomplishment and an ESSENTIAL read for those most serious and aspiring towards excellence in branding and holistic marketing. I thought the book in particular: 1. Demonstrates that marketing is, or should be, a practice of many inter-related disciplines (or sub-disciplines if you will) and processes. 2. It articulates that the marketing discipline as a whole, can not be achieved by giving someone a "quick and dirty" template to read. It is a science as well as an art that requires experience, knowledge and judgement. The fast track to excellence in marketing does not exist via a quick technique. Marketing is a system, a holistic management process consisting of many distinct disciplines. 3. Gives an excellent map of the Brand-Relationship Spectrum. 4. Provides much needed balance and insight on addressing Branding on the Web. So concise. So accurate. So relevant. 5. Gives a wonderful and insightful view into contemporary sponsorship. I would add that what is so relevant about the book, which is characteristic of the series particularly within the last two of the brand trilogy, is that it discusses where firms run into problems. Knowing what to avoid is as important as knowing what one needs to do. It is essential for keeping execution and strategy in alignment. Brand Leadership is based on solid experience and research in the field. The book will go a long way in helping those managers who are wise enough to learn from it. Highly recommend you purchase all of the books in the trilogy, as they strongly complement and support each other.

Marketing is Business Strategy in Action:
In this third book in Aaker's branding trilogy the University of California professor and brand consultant documents a change away from the classic system of brand management that was created at Procter & Gamble (P & G) in the 1930's and subsequently spread to market-driven companies all over the world. Aaker makes the case that classic brand management is being replaced by what he calls the brand leadership model. The manager in the brand leadership model emphasizes strategy as well as tactics, has a broader scope and is higher in the organization than the old-style brand manager. It focuses not only on short-term financials, but also on brand equity measures. The authors say that this new approach results from the market complexities that have arisen out of competitive pressures channel dynamics, business environments with multiple brands, aggressive brand extensions and complex subbrand structures. This shift involves fundamental changes in organization structure, systems and culture as the authors demonstrate with case studies from companies like Polo Ralph Lauren, Virgin Airlines, Adidas, Marriott and McDonalds. These case studies make the book more readable and drive home the points that the authors make with their rigid system of definitions and processes. Added bonuses are the chapters dealing with brand architecture, the role of sponsorship and the web, and building brands beyond advertising. Again, by using real world examples, the authors demonstrate how brand building today can benefit from many communications vehicles beyond traditional advertising so long as they make positive connections between the brand and consumers. Brand Leadership is not a casual read, but it will reward the diligent reader with an understanding of how to deal with complex brand management issues and its linkage to business strategy. It will also help organizations that are not so market driven realize that marketing is really just the manifestation of solid business strategy.

Latest Aaker how-to manual hobbled by marketing-speak:
Branding books from academics do the same sorts of things, but Aaker does them better than most. First, they define consumer needs and wants. Then they show how market segments are formed. Then they elaborate vast systems for categorizing brand traits to attack the segments. Aaker's latest effort -- a whopper at 350 pages of dense marketing jargon -- presents a system that is as good as any for ordering brand traits into sensible patterns that can be more easily manipulated. Kapferer's system is less exact, while Keller's is less up-to-date. Aaker takes a long , long time to say what he means on global branding --- namely that it's right for some but not right for others. His comments on Web branding are so incisive that a lot of Web-heads might wish they'd read this book two years ago. For a broad survey of contemporary branding in a readable style, check out the new Brands in the Balance from Kevin Drawbaugh. But if it's theory you want, you can't beat Aaker.

Insightful!:
David A. Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler flex their marketing muscles in this exhaustive treatise on global brand creation. But although the authors clearly know an enormous amount about building the perfect branding campaign, their book suffers from a patina of academia that makes it read like a textbook. The book has a multitude of marketing insights to offer and it cites plenty of real-life business examples, so we at getAbstract think you'll gain much by sticking with it if you are in marketing or public relations. But the next time the authors expound on their methods for making products memorable, accessible and likeable, we hope they spare a tender thought for their own worthy book.