I have read several books about brand such as "The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand" and "The New Guide to Identity: Wolff Olins: How to Create and Sustain Change Through Managing Identity", which are mostly about how to well use of the power of brand or how to launch the identity program.
This book is also about brand identity. But it is totally different from what I have read before. Seldom book about brand will concern for the psychological factors of customers. But it does. Customers do not usually act rationally. Many factors, not just the product itself but a total sensory experience will affect them to make purchase decisions.
This book talks about the management of brand identity by using aesthetics, that is, to create an overall customer impressions through visual impacts. The use of symbol, styles, themes, retail spaces and environments etc can satisfy customers' experiential needs - their aesthetic needs, which creates value to customers. All these are illustrated by many great successful cases: Absolut Vodka, Cathay Pacific Airlines, Starbucks, NikeˇKˇK
Try to read this book and manage how to build brand at another angle!
First, by the end of the book, can anyone give a decent, concise definition of what exactly aesthetics is? Of course, it's a difficult question because much of aesthetics lies in the overall whole impression created by a brand, rather than just on packaging, advertisements, and sensory data. But one major problem I had was by about halfway through the book, 'aesthetics' had come to mean just about anything. Marketing communications? Aesthetics. Packaging? Aesthetics. All sensory information given off by a product? Aesthetics. The environment the product is sold or consumed in? Aesthetics. With a definition this loose, of *course* it's critical for marketers to pay attention to aesthetics, and of course they already do to a large degree. While the emphasis of seeing all these things as part of an interrelated whole is an admirable goal, this leads to my second problem.
Second, since aesthetics is such a 'squishy/stretchy' concept, how on earth are you supposed to measure it, or know when youre doing a great job at managing it? The scenarios where a manager would make one aesthetic change, and then see quantifiable results seems rare. It would strike me as more common that aesthetic changes go hand-in-hand with strategy re-assesments and realignments.
Still, even with my general reservations on the book, I can reccomend it as one of the better practicioner-focused books on branding and brand identity to come out in recent years.
Suits best cop it, and learn from it. This is better than any stuffed up text you'll find.
Clad in a MGM white T, light brown khaki's, gold around my neck, cigar in left hand, brass knuckles on my right. Cap pulled down, eyes shifty. Black Jag, dark tinted windows.
Others try to copy, beat it, with a twist of my wrist, i end all existence.