The Meaningful Brand

Instilling brand loyalty among consumers is the key to long-term success, and requires focusing on meaningful differentiation: functional, emotional, or societal. Supported by data analyses, case studies and interviews, The Meaningful Brand explores the four components of a distinguished brand: purpose, delivery, resonance, and difference.

Presenting the basics of brand management, the book provides both a theoretical and practical guide to brands, placing emphasis on the theory that the consumer is a co-creator in a brand′s identity. In a world in which social media and inclusive digital platforms have increased customer engagement, the role of brands and branding has changed. The line between the producer and the consumer has become blurred; consumers are no longer the recipients of brand identity, but the co-creators, playing a significant role in shaping new products and systems. To help students better understand the basics of brand management, and the co-creation theory, the book includes a collection of geographically diverse case studies, including: Burger King, Lego, Lynx, Maserati, HSBC and Vegemite. The book is complemented by online resources for lecturers and students, including PowerPoint slides, journal articles, web and video links, and a selection of exclusive videos with a professional brand consultant. Suitable reading for students of branding and brand management modules.

This popular textbook introduces students to contemporary brand management and innovation with a focus on how companies and consumers are interacting and co-creating brands today. The latest edition continues to provide equal focus on theory and practice with all new case studies and examples from brands around the globe to help show the wide range and diversity of brands and consumers today. These include Glossier, Lovehoney, Whisper, Shinola Detroit, Trung Nguyen, Shatta Wale, Tony’s Chocolonely. Also included are updated research references and online resources, as well as a brand-new chapter on the creative aspects of branding from naming to logos and experiences. This textbook is essential reading for all students studying branding and brand management at university level. Michael Beverland is Professor of Brand Marketing at University of Sussex Business School. Pinar Cankurtaran is Assistant Professor of Brand Strategy at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology.

“ We’re now hip-deep, if not drowning, in the ‘experience economy.‘ Here‘s the smartest book I‘ve read so far that can actually help get your brand to higher ground, fast. And it‘s written by people who not only drew the map, but blazed these trails in the first place.” –Brian Collins, Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Brand Integration Group In a market economy characterized by commoditized products and global competition, how do companies gain deep and lasting loyalty from their customers? The key, this book argues, is in providing meaningful customer experiences. Writing in the tradition of Louis Cheskin, one of the founding fathers of market research, the authors of Making Meaning observe, define, and describe the meaningful customer experience. By consciously evoking certain deeply valued meanings through their products, services, and multidimensional customer experiences, they argue, companies can create more value and achieve lasting strategic advantages over their competitors. A few businesses are already discovering this approach, but until now no one has articulated it in such a persuasive and practical way. Making Meaning not only encourages businesses to adopt an innovation process that’s centered on meaning, it also tells you how. The book outlines a plan of action and describes the attributes of a meaning-centric innovation team. With insightful real-world examples drawn from the Cheskin company's experience and from the authors' observations of the contemporary global market, this book outlines a plan of action and describes the attributes of a meaning-centric innovation team. Meaningful experiences—as distinct from trivial ones—reinforce or transform the customer’s sense of purpose and significance. The authors’ vision of a world of meaningful consumption is idealistic, but don’t be fooled: this is a straightforward business book with an eye on the ROI. It shows how to bring R&D, design, and marketing together to create deeper and richer experiences for your customers. Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences is an engaging and practical book for business leaders, explaining how their companies can create more meaningful products and services to better achieve their goals.

Learn how to create an authentic and consistent brand strategy by focusing on the values of your company. This book breaks this process into three steps focused on brand identity, setting intentions and implementing the resulting strategy. To consistently appeal to consumers, a brand needs to implement a strong strategy that delivers a memorable experience. There are two other essential stages of this process, and the companies who skip over these risk seeming out of touch and inauthentic. In Brand Strategy in Three Steps, branding coach Jay Mandel takes readers through an innovative and efficient three-step approach to brand strategy centered on identity, intention and implementation. Brand Strategy in Three Steps highlights the importance of communicating value to consumers through meaningful interactions. Jay Mandel walks readers through the best branding strategies for new companies and established ones looking to revamp their approach, providing thoughtful exercises to help readers map a living brand document. The book helps readers through the three essential steps of brand strategy: identifying their core values as a company, determining how this relates to the product or service and tying these together when rolling out the strategy. Readers will gain the practical insight necessary to launch a successful, purposeful brand strategy and go-to-market plan.

Best-selling brand expert Marty Neumeier shows you how to make the leap from a company-driven past to the consumer-driven future. You’ll learn how to flip your brand from offering products to offering meaning, from value protection to value creation, from cost-based pricing to relationship pricing, from market segments to brand tribes, and from customer satisfaction to customer empowerment. In the 13 years since Neumeier wrote The Brand Gap, the influence of social media has proven his core theory: “A brand isn’t what you say it is – it’s what they say it is.” People are no longer consumers or market segments or tiny blips in big data. They don’t buy brands. They join brands. They want a vote in what gets produced and how it gets delivered. They’re willing to roll up their sleeves and help out – not only by promoting the brand to their friends, but by contributing content, volunteering ideas, and even selling products or services. At the center of the book is the Brand Commitment Matrix, a simple tool for organizing the six primary components of a brand. Your brand community is your tribe. How will you lead it?

There’s no shortage of books talking about the importance of story, and for good reason. Effective storytelling is an important tool for your organization. But … Storytelling is not enough. If you want an organization that creates long-term positive impact, then you need more than clever stories. You need to create meaning through narrative. In Culture-Bending Narratives, Jason Locy takes you through the process of moving beyond the fundamentals of storytelling and into a deeper conversation around the power of narrative. With narrative, your organization can challenge the way others see the world and invite them on a journey to discovering a deeper purpose and meaning. In the end, you will leave with a new way of thinking that weaves your organization’s desire for a better world throughout all you do.

This book addresses the challenges and subtleties behind marketing to women and confronts the idea that gender alone can be used as an indicator to target your market. Darroch provides practical insights into market segmentation and recommends a new approach that focuses on targeting human needs, not gender, in order to reach female customers.