Building Strong Brands: Audiobook Summary

The full 7h03 audio is available here: https://www.theoldseller.com/building... Building Strong Brands In this compelling 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. 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-organization, and brand-as-symbol perspectives. The twin concepts of brand identity (the brand image that brand strategists aspire to create or maintain) and brand position (that part of the brand identity that is to be actively communicated) play a key role in managing the "out-of-the-box" brand. 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. Aaker also addresses practical management issues, introducing a set of brand equity measures, termed the brand equity ten, to help those who measure and track brand equity across products and markets. He presents and analyzes brand-nurturing organizational forms that are responsive to the challenges of coordinated brands across markets, products, roles, and contexts. Potentially destructive organizational pressures to change a brand's identity and position are also discussed. 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. I am the Vice Chair at Prophet, a global brand and marketing consulting company that is on the forefront of branding issues, and Professor Emeritus of Marketing Strategy at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. I blog at Aaker on Brands (http://www.davidaaker.com). I live in Orinda, California near my three daughters and seven grandchildren and try to do a lot of biking and just enough golfing. My professional passion is understanding brands and helping firms build brands and brand portfolios. Formal Bio David A. Aaker is the Vice Chairman of Prophet and Professor Emeritus of Marketing Strategy at the University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business. He is the winner of five career awards for contributions to the practice and science of marketing, including the Paul D. Converse Award, the Vijay Mahajan Award, the Buck Weaver Award, the Sheth Foundation Medal and being named to the NYAMA Marketing Hall of Fame. He has published over 100 articles and 18 books that have sold well over 1 million copies and been translated into 18 languages, including Strategic Market Management, Building Strong Brands, Brand Leadership (co-authored Erich Joachimsthaler), Brand Portfolio Strategy, From Fargo to the World of Brands, Spanning Silos, Brand Relevance, Aaker on Branding, Creating Signature Stories, Owning Game-Changing Subcategories and The Future of Purpose-Driven Branding. Named one of the top five most important marketing/business gurus in 2007, Aaker has won awards for the best article in the California Management Review and the Journal of Marketing (twice). A recognized authority on brand strategy, he has been an active consultant and speaker throughout the world. He regularly blogs at davidaaker.com and on Linkedin.