The most important assets of any business are intangible: its company name, brands, symbols, and slogans, and their underlying associations, perceived quality, name awareness, customer base, and proprietary resources such as patents, trademarks, and channel relationships. These assets, which comprise brand equity, are a primary source of competitive advantage and future earnings, contends David Aaker, a national authority on branding. Yet, research shows that managers cannot identify with confidence their brand associations, levels of consumer awareness, or degree of customer loyalty. Moreover in the last decade, managers desperate for short-term financial results have often unwittingly damaged their brands through price promotions and unwise brand extensions, causing irreversible deterioration of the value of the brand name. Although several companies, such as Canada Dry and Colgate-Palmolive, have recently created an equity management position to be guardian of the value of brand names, far too few managers, Aaker concludes, really understand the concept of brand equity and how it must be implemented. In a fascinating and insightful examination of the phenomenon of brand equity, Aaker provides a clear and well-defined structure of the relationship between a brand and its symbol and slogan, as well as each of the five underlying assets, which will clarify for managers exactly how brand equity does contribute value. The author opens each chapter with a historical analysis of either the success or failure of a particular company's attempt at building brand equity: the fascinating Ivory soap story; the transformation of Datsun to Nissan; the decline of Schlitz beer; the making of the Ford Taurus; and others. Finally, citing examples from many other companies, Aaker shows how to avoid the temptation to place short-term performance before the health of the brand and, instead, to manage brands strategically by creating, developing, and exploiting each of the five assets in turn

Susan Gunelius uncovers how a brand about sex survived and thrived despite attacks from every direction, in an increasingly competitive market and jaded consumers. It's the story of brand building, brand value, brand longevity and the ultimate brand champion.

A top executive at one of the world's leading marketing firms analyzes the familiarity and strength of brands and establishes five steps towards increasing brand strength in a globalized world Rapid advances in modern technology present companies with quickly expanding marketing opportunities, but they also create an over-saturated business landscape that both helps and hurts brands. The Global Brand is a thorough investigation of brand strength in the accelerated modern business world. Nigel Hollis draws on his experience at Millward Brown to present a simple formula for determining brand strength based on two axes, Presence (or familiarity) and Voltage (or marketing appeal), to illustrate the market value and performance of brands. He analyzes the five steps of customer commitment to a strong brand--Presence, Relevance, Performance, Advantage, and Bonding. Finally, Hollis emphasizes human nature as a set of constant core values that all brands should appeal to, and analyzes the future of brand-building as a profitable investment. “In The Global Brand, Nigel Hollis not only corrects some of the misconceptions of the past but offers a glimpse of the future that is both perceptive and grounded in good business sense. Those who take the time to properly digest this book will save their companies a lot of money.” —Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive Officer, WPP

"Aaker on Branding" presents in a compact form the twenty essential principles of branding that will lead to the creation of strong brands. Culled from the six David Aaker brand books and related publications, these principles provide the broad understanding of brands, brand strategy, brand portfolios, and brand building that all business, marketing, and brand strategists should know. "Aaker on Branding" is a source for how you create and maintain strong brands and synergetic brand portfolios. It provides a checklist of strategies, perspectives, tools, and concepts that represents not only what you should know but also what action options should be on the table. When followed, these principles will lead to strong, enduring brands that both support business strategies going forward and create coherent and effective brand families. Those now interested in and involved with branding are faced with information overload, not only from the Aaker books but from others as well. It is hard to know what to read and which elements to adapt. There are a lot of good ideas out there but also some that are inferior, need updating, or are subject to being misinterpreted and misapplied. And there are some ideas that, while plausible, are simply wrong if not dangerous especially if taken literally. "Aaker on Branding"offers a sense of topic priorities and a roadmap to David Aaker's books, thinking, and contributions. As it structures the larger literature of the brand field, it also advances the theory of branding and the practice of brand management and, by extension, the practice of business management.

Bruce Turkel explains how companies and individuals can build their brand value with simple, clear explanations, anecdotes, and illustrations.

Providing a synthesis of practical blueprint and theoretical field guide to managing design, this comprehensive reference shows how the various disciplines of design - product, packaging, graphic and environmental - create value and contribute to company performance.

In a context where change is rapid and complexity is increasing, the crucial challenge brands face is to maintain perceived value, and making relevance is a monumental task for marketing professionals. The saturation of new brands, categories, and consumer choices, coupled with decreasing attention spans and generational differences, creates a sense of uncertainty and volatility. Brands risk becoming invisible and losing value, dominated by price competition and facing limited advertising budgets. In response to this situation, the book provides a guide for marketing professionals to use culture as a strategic tool to strengthen their brand value. By leading cultural transformation and offering consumers enriching and ever-evolving identities, brands can remain relevant and valuable in an ever-changing world.

Most of us have an intuitive sense of superior branding. We prefer to purchase brands we find distinctive—that deliver on some important, relevant dimension better than other brands. These brands have typically achieved positional advantage. Yet few professionals have had the formal training that goes beyond marketing theory to bridge the “theory-doing gap”—understanding the specific techniques and strategies that can be used to create brands that attain positional advantage in the marketplace. Positioning for Advantage is a comprehensive how-to guide for creating, building, and executing effective brand strategies. Kimberly A. Whitler identifies essential marketing strategy techniques and moves through the major stages of positioning a brand to achieve in-market advantage. Introducing seven tools—from strategic positioning concepts to strategy mapping to influencer maps—Whitler provides templates, frameworks, and step-by-step processes to build and manage growth brands that achieve positional advantage. This book presents real-world scenarios, helping readers activate tools to increase skill in creating brands that achieve positional advantage. Brimming with insights for students and professionals alike, Positioning for Advantage helps aspiring C-level leaders understand not only what superior branding looks like but also how to make it come to life.

Brand Admiration uses deep research on consumer psychology, marketing, consumer engagement and communication to develop a powerful, integrated perspective and innovative approach to brand management. Using numerous real-world examples and backed by research from top notch academics, this book describes how companies can turn a product, service, corporate, person or place brand into one that customers love, trust and respect; in short, how to make a brand admired. The result? Greater brand loyalty, stronger brand advocacy, and higher brand equity. Admired brands grow more revenue in a more efficient way over a longer period of time and with more opportunities for growth. The real power of Brand Admiration is that it provides concrete, actionable guidance on how brand managers can make customers (and employees) admire a brand. Admired brands don't just do the job; they offer exactly what customers need (enabling benefits), in way that's pleasing, fun, interesting, and emotionally involving (enticing benefits), while making people feel good about themselves (enriching benefits). Providing these benefits, called 3 Es, is foundational to building , strengthening and leveraging brand admiration. In addition, the authors articulate a common-sense and action based measure of brand equity, and they develop dashboard metrics to diagnose if there are any 'canaries in the coal mine', and if so, what to do next. In short, Brand Admiration provides a coherent, cohesive approach to helping the brand stand the test of time. A well-designed, well-managed brand becomes a part of the public consciousness, and ultimately, a part of the culture. This trajectory is the fruit of decisions made from an integrated strategic standpoint. This book shows you how to shift the process for your brand, with practical guidance and an analytical approach.

As industries turn increasingly hostile, it is clear that strong brand-building skills are needed to survive and prosper. In David Aaker's pathbreaking book, MANAGING BRAND EQUITY, managers discovered the value of a brand as a strategic asset and a company's primary source of competitive advantage. Now, in this compelling new work, Aaker uses real brand-building cases from Saturn, General Electric, Kodak, Healthy Choice, McDonald's, and others to demonstrate how strong brands have been created and managed. A common pitfall of brand strategists is to focus on brand attributes. Aaker shows how to break out of the box by considering emotional and self-expressive benefits and by introducing the brand-as-person, brand-as-organisation, and brand-as-symbol perspectives. A second pitfall is to ignore the fact that individual brands are part of a larger system consisting of many intertwined and overlapping brands and subbrands. Aaker shows how to manage the "brand system" to achieve clarity and synergy, to adapt to a changing environment, and to leverage brand assets into new markets and products. As executives in a wide range of industries seek to prevent their products and services from becoming commodities, they are recommitting themselves to brands as a foundation of business strategy. This new work will be essential reading for the battle-ready.