Zag: The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands


Marty Neumeier - 2006
    ZAG follows the ultra-clear "whiteboard overview" style of the author's first book, THE BRAND GAP, but drills deeper into the question of how brands can harness the power of differentiation. The author argues that in an extremely cluttered marketplace, traditional differentiation is no longer enough--today companies need "radical differentiation" to create lasting value for their shareholders and customers. In an entertaining 3-hour read you'll learn:- why me-too brands are doomed to fail- how to "read" customer feedback on new products and messages- the 17 steps for designing "difference" into your brand- how to turn your brand's "onliness" into a "trueline" to drive synergy- the secrets of naming products, services, and companies- the four deadly dangers faced by brand portfolios- how to "stretch" your brand without breaking it- how to succeed at all three stages of the competition cycleFrom the back cover: In an age of me-too products and instant communications, keeping up with the competition is no longer a winning strategy. Today you have to out-position, out-maneuver, and out-design the competition. The new rule? When everybody zigs, zag. In his first book, THE BRAND GAP, Neumeier showed companies how to bridge the distance between business strategy and design. In ZAG, he illustrates the number-one strategy of high-performance brands--radical differentiation.ZAG is an AIGA Design Press book, published under Peachpit's New Riders imprint in partnership with AIGA. For a quick peek inside ZAG, go to www.zagbook.com.

Bigger Than This: How to Turn Any Venture Into An Admired Brand


Fabian Geyrhalter - 2018
    And they are based on commodity products or services.Following the success of his #1 bestselling book, “How to Launch a Brand,” acclaimed brand strategist Fabian Geyrhalter is back with an enlightening new book that digs deep into today’s new world of brand creation. “Bigger Than This” challenges companies – from startups to Fortune 100s – to (re)discover their spark and connect with today’s consumers on a deeper level.In “Bigger Than This,” Geyrhalter analyzes brands that are based on commodity products – watches, socks, shoes, fish – yet they quickly turn into beloved brands. He emphasizes the importance of storytelling, encouraging brands to embrace 8 simple traits these brands showcase and offers specific, actionable commandments that any brand can implement – story, belief, cause, heritage, delight, transparency, solidarity and individuality. Instead of playing “dress-up,” he wants businesses to uncover the roots of their ventures and share honest, empathetic stories that resonate with consumers, creating a loyal following that leads to strong, successful brands.Delightfully concise and refreshing, Geyrhalter draws on his personal experience of having helped shape over 60 brands, and intentionally (and noticeably) steps away from marketing fluff and business lingo that often clouds the integrity of marketing books.

Storyscaping: Stop Creating Ads, Start Creating Worlds


Gaston Legorburu - 2014
    Storyscapes introduces "storyscaping" as a way to create immersive experiences that solve the challenge of connecting brands and consumers. This book describes a powerful new approach to advertising and marketing for the digital age that involves using stories to design emotional and transactional experiences for customers, both online and offline. Each connection inspires engagement with another, so the brand becomes part of the customer's story. Authors Gaston Legorburu and Darren McColl explain how marketers can identify and define the core target audience segment, define your brand's purpose, understand the emotional desires of your consumers, and more.•Shows how to map how the consumer engages with the category and product/service•Explains how to develop an organizing idea and creative plan for an immersive storyscape experience•Defines the role of marketing channels around the organizing idea•Establishes how technology can be applied to the experienceLearn how to measure, optimize, and evolve the customer experience through the use of strong narratives that compel consumers to buy into your brand.

Identity Designed: The Definitive Guide to Visual Branding


David Airey - 2019
      Written by best-selling writer and renowned designer David Airey, Identity Designed formalizes the process and the benefits of brand identity design and includes a substantial collection of high-caliber projects from a variety of the world’s most talented design studios.   You’ll see the history and importance of branding, a contemporary assessment of best practices, and how there’s always more than one way to exceed client expectations. You’ll also learn a range of methods for conducting research, defining strategy, generating ideas, developing touchpoints, implementing style guides, and futureproofing your designs. Each identity case study is followed by a recap of key points.   The book includes projects by Lantern, Base, Pharus, OCD, Rice Creative, Foreign Policy, Underline Studio, Fedoriv, Freytag Anderson, Bedow, Robot Food, Together Design, Believe in, Jack Renwick Studio, ico Design, and Lundgren+Lindqvist.  Identity Designed is a must-have, not only for designers, but also for entrepreneurs who want to improve their work with a greater understanding of how good design is good business.

Branding: In Five and a Half Steps


Michael Johnson - 2016
    His studio, johnson banks, is responsible for the rebranding of many notable clients, including Virgin Atlantic, Think London, BFI, Christian Aid, and MORE TH>N, and he has garnered a plethora of awards in the process.In Branding, Johnson strips everyday brands down to their basic components, with case studies that enable us to understand why we select one product or service over another and allow us to comprehend how seemingly subtle influences can affect key life decisions. The first part of the book shows how the birth of a brand begins not with finding a solution but rather with identifying the correct question—the missing gap in the market—to which an answer is needed. Johnson proceeds to unveil hidden elements involved in creating a successful brand—from the strapline that gives the brand a narrative and a purpose to clever uses of typography that unite design and language.With more than 1,000 vibrant illustrations showcasing the world’s most successful corporate identities, as well as generic templates enabling you to create your own brand or ad with ease, Branding explores every step of the development process required to create the simplest and most immediately compelling brands.

How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know


Byron Sharp - 2010
    Tackling issues such as how brands grow, how advertising really works, what price promotions really do & how loyalty programs really affect loyalty.

Wally Olins on Brand


Wally Olins - 2003
    But branding has now moved so far beyond its commercial origins that consumer response has entered uncharted territory. Wally Olins sets out the ground rules for branding success in the 21st century, explaining why understanding the links between business, brand and consumer has never been more vital for commercial success. It will be an essential purchase for everyone in advertising, marketing and business who needs to understand why the most successful brands in the world triumph by making insiders believe in them - and consumers buy into them.

Lovemarks


Kevin Roberts - 2004
    Lovemarks is the product of the fertile-iconoclast mind of Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi. Roberts argues vociferously, and with a ton of data to support him, that traditional branding practices have become stultified. What's needed are customer Love affairs. Roberts lays out his grand scheme for mystery, magic, sensuality, and the like in his gloriously designed book Lovemarks."-Tom PetersTom Peters, one of the most influential business thinkers of all time, described the first edition of Lovemarks: the future beyond brands as "brilliant." He also announced it as the "Best Business Book" published in the first five years of this century. Now translated into fourteen languages, with more than 150,000 copies in print, Lovemarks is back in a revised edition featuring a new chapter on the peculiarly human experience of shopping. The new chapter, "Diamonds in the Mine," is an insightful collection of ideas for producers and consumers, for owners of small stores and operators of superstores. So forget making lists! Shopping, says Kevin Roberts, is an emotional event. With this as a starting point, he looks at the history of shopping and how it has changed so dramatically over the last ten years. Using the Lovemark elements of Mystery, Sensuality, and Intimacy, Roberts delves into the secrets of success that can be used to create the ultimate shopping experience.

Unleashing the Ideavirus: Stop Marketing AT People! Turn Your Ideas into Epidemics by Helping Your Customers Do the Marketing thing for You.


Seth Godin - 2000
    "This is a subversive book. It says that the marketer is not--and ought not to be--at the center of successful marketing. The customer should be. Are you ready for that?" --From the Foreword by Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point.Counter to traditional marketing wisdom, which tries to count, measure, and manipulate the spread of information, Seth Godin argues that the information can spread most effectively from customer to customer, rather than from business to customer. Godin calls this powerful customer-to-customer dialogue the ideavirus, and cheerfully eggs marketers on to create an environment where their ideas can replicate and spread. In lively detail, Godin looks at the ways companies such as PayPal, Hotmail, GeoCities, even Volkswagen have successfully launched ideaviruses. He offers a "recipe" for creating your own ideavirus, identifies the key factors in the successful spread of an ideavirus (powerful sneezers, hives, a clear vector, a smooth, friction-free transmission), and shows how any business, large or small, can use ideavirus marketing to succeed in a world that just doesn't want to hear it anymore from the traditional marketers.

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


Al Ries - 1980
    Writing in their trademark witty, fast-paced style, advertising gurus Ries and Trout explain how to:Make and position an industry leader so that its name and message wheedles its way into the collective subconscious of your market-and stays therePosition a follower so that it can occupy a niche not claimed by the leaderAvoid letting a second product ride on the coattails of an established one.Positioning also shows you how to:Use leading ad agency techniques to capture the biggest market share and become a household nameBuild your strategy around your competition's weaknessesReposition a strong competitor and create a weak spotUse your present position to its best advantageChoose the best name for your productDetermine when-and why-less is moreAnalyze recent trends that affect your positioning.Ries and Trout provide many valuable case histories and penetrating analyses of some of the most phenomenal successes and failures in advertising history. Revised to reflect significant developments in the five years since its original publication, Positioning is required reading for anyone in business today.

The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes


Margaret Mark - 2001
    Yet, few companies really know how brand meaning works, how to manage it, and how to use brand meaning strategically. Written by best-selling author Carol S. Pearson (The Hero Within) and branding guru Margaret Mark, this groundbreaking book provides the illusive and compelling answer. Using studies drawn from the experiences of Nike, Marlboro, Ivory and other powerhouse brands, the authors show that the most successful brands are those that most effectively correspond to fundamental patterns in the unconscious mind known as archetypes. The book provides tools and strategies to: - Implement a proven system for identifying the most appropriate and leverageable archetypes for any company and/or brand - Harness the power of the archetype to align corporate strategy to sustain competitive advantage

Sticky Branding: 12.5 Ways to Stand Out, Attract Customers, and Grow an Incredible Brand


Jeremy Miller - 2014
    Companies like Apple, Nike, and Starbucks have made themselves as recognizable as they are successful. But large companies are not the only ones who can stand out. It’s achievable for any business willing to break away from the industry norms and find innovative ways to serve its customers.Based on a decade of research into what makes companies successful, Sticky Branding’s 12.5 guiding principles are drawn from hundreds of interviews with CEOs and business owners who have excelled within their industries. By following their examples your company will:- Attract more customers- Sell more, faster- Inspire employee engagement- Become immune to the competition- Earn higher profitsSticky Branding is your branding playbook. It provides ideas, stories and exercises to make your company stand out, attract customers, and grow into an incredible brand.

The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Buy and Live as They Do


Clotaire Rapaille - 2006
    His groundbreaking revelations shed light not just on business but on the way every human being acts and lives around the world. Rapaille’s breakthrough notion is that we acquire a silent system of Codes as we grow up within our culture. These Codes—the Culture Code—are what make us American, or German, or French, and they invisibly shape how we behave in our personal lives, even when we are completely unaware of our motives. What’s more, we can learn to crack the Codes that guide our actions and achieve new understanding of why we do the things we do. Rapaille has used the Culture Code to help Chrysler build the PT Cruiser—the most successful American car launch in recent memory. He has used it to help Procter & Gamble design its advertising campaign for Folger’s coffee – one of the longest-lasting and most successful campaigns in the annals of advertising. He has used it to help companies as diverse as GE, AT&T, Boeing, Honda, Kellogg, and L’Oréal improve their bottom line at home and overseas. And now, in The Culture Code, he uses it to reveal why Americans act distinctly like Americans, and what makes us different from the world around us. In The Culture Code, Dr. Rapaille decodes two dozen of our most fundamental archetypes—ranging from sex to money to health to America itself—to give us “a new set of glasses” with which to view our actions and motivations. Why are we so often disillusioned by love? Why is fat a solution rather than a problem? Why do we reject the notion of perfection? Why is fast food in our lives to stay? The answers are in the Codes. Understanding the Codes gives us unprecedented freedom over our lives. It lets us do business in dramatically new ways. And it finally explains why people around the world really are different, and reveals the hidden clues to understanding us all.

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality


Scott Belsky - 2010
    Ideas for new businesses, solutions to the world's problems, and artistic breakthroughs are common, but great execution is rare. According to Scott Belsky, the capacity to make ideas happen can be developed by anyone willing to develop their organizational habits and leadership capability. That's why he founded Behance, a company that helps creative people and teams across industries develop these skills. Belsky has spent six years studying the habits of creative people and teams that are especially productive-the ones who make their ideas happen time and time again. After interviewing hundreds of successful creatives, he has compiled their most powerful-and often counterintuitive-practices, such as: •Generate ideas in moderation and kill ideas liberally •Prioritize through nagging •Encourage fighting within your team While many of us obsess about discovering great new ideas, Belsky shows why it's better to develop the capacity to make ideas happen-a capacity that endures over time.

Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Entire Branding Team


Alina Wheeler - 2003
    From researching the competition to translating the vision of the CEO, to designing and implementing an integrated brand identity programme, the meticulous development process of designing a brand identity is presented through a highly visible step-by-step approach in five phases.