Of these applications, many I will apply to my work, and many others I will pass along to my company's upper management. Had I found Gobé's emotional branding first, there would be a need for fewer books in my branding library.
Useful, concise, and practical.
So why did I purchase this book? Well, given I was called in by an agency to look at the EQ side of one of their projects; I wanted to know what others had written on the topic. After reading Aaker's book I understand I fell in a trap called "brand extension". This works as follows: if you want to launch a new product, look for an existing brand which is available and which you can extend to cover your new product. In this case, the "product" probably is Marc Gobé's brand creation firm and we all know that emotional intelligence is a label that sells well since Goleman put it on the map in 1996.
The problem is that many products sold under the label "emotional intelligence" aren't much related with that, and certainly do not help to raise your EQ. For me this is the case for this book. While it contains some useful messages around making sure your product is loved, that customers like the experience of using it (it should be engaging, fulfilling the customer's desire) and that you have to build a relationship with the customer. The body of the book then shows how there is an emotional link between several marketing aspects and the customer. Unfortunately, that wasn't really "new" to me, and what's worse, there isn't much "how to" in this book. In other words, while it may help to raise the awareness of some readers that the emotional aspect is important, that's all it does: it doesn't give you the tools to deal with this. I suppose Marc Gobé prefers you'd contact his branding agency rather than sharing some of its secrets.
In short, even if Aaker's book I mentioned in the introduction of this review is over 10 years old, it remains much more useful than "modern" books like this one.
Patrick Merlevede - author of "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence"