University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
What Great Brands Do
Book

What Great Brands Do

The Seven Brand-Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest

Denise Lee Yohn
Jossey-Bass, 2014
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Editorial Rating

8

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  • Applicable

Recommendation

Sound brand building has never been more important. Branding professional Denise Lee Yohn explains the differences between conventional branding and what she terms the “brand-as-business” strategy, a more enlightened and effective approach. Yohn details her brand-building methodology and the seven principles that support it. She focuses on building corporate culture, establishing customer connections, practicing innovation, providing quality products and services, and defining your company’s commercial and social missions. Yohn’s instructive examples show how the greatest companies build their brands within and without. getAbstract recommends her useful presentation to corporate leaders, marketers and start-up entrepreneurs.

Summary

Brand Building Is More than Branding

Companies that embrace the “brand-as-business” strategy use their brands as management tools that can motivate and guide employees; excite and win customers; and align their operations, activities and messages with their core values. Put to work this way, brands have uplifting, energizing power.

Use this definition to visualize and activate the utility hidden in your brand: “A brand is a bundle of values and attributes that define the value you deliver to people through the entire customer experience, and the unique way of doing business that forms the basis of your company’s relationships with all of its stakeholders.” Companies with great brands build employee and customer awareness and engagement by deploying their brands as “complete strategic platforms.”

Despite brands’ importance, almost two out of three chief marketing officers at large corporations say that their brands do not have an impact on their business decision making. Often, their companies use their brands exactly the wrong way. They create an elaborate “brand facade” and hide behind it. Such branding is hollow image building, and consumers see through it...

About the Author

Denise Lee Yohn is a consultant and speaker with more than 25 years of branding experience.

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