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 acrossmarkets, 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.
