A New Brand World: Eight Principles
for Achieving Brand Leadership in
the Twenty-First Century by Stephen
Fenichell
This Is A Book Everyone Should Read
What does it really take to succeed in business today? In A New Brand
World, Scott Bedbury, who helped make Nike and Starbucks two of the
most successful brands of recent years, explains this often mysterious
process by setting out the principles that helped these companies become
leaders in their respective industries. With illuminating anecdotes from his
own in-the-trenches experiences and dozens of case studies of other
winning-and failed-branding efforts (including Harley-Davidson, Guinness,
The Gap, and Disney), Bedbury offers practical, battle-tested advice for
keeping any business at the top of its game.

Personal Review: A New Brand World: Eight Principles for
Achieving Brand Leadership in the Twenty-First Century by
Stephen Fenichell
I have been recommending this book to everyone since it came out so it's
probably high time I wrote a review of it.
There are two basic reasons I think this book is so fantastic.
1) Timing. Largely because of the internet, and now the social networking
revolution, the notion of brand and brand loyalty and how it segments by
gender, age, and location is so fluid, if a company doesn't have its finger
on the pulse of who their customer is and why they do business with them,
they are as good as dead. Bedbury's book lays out in clear terms the way
to stay on top of those things. He talks about The Gap and how their
brand is essentially a middle market brand in terms of price and quality,
and they realized there was more money to be made by going down
market as well as up market. The problem was that the brand, the identity
of the company was not elastic enough to cover all of that ground, so
instead of trying to stretch the brand to expend, they bought Old Navy (for
down market) and Banana Republic (up) and thus secured three distinct
brands for the tastes and values and budgets of three separate markets.
In yet another example he talked about some work he did for Shell Oil and
how their executive team was brooding over how to advertise the fact that
they had the best gas. You can almost picture Bedbury with his forehead
on the conference room table (in frustration and disbelief) before he
explained to them that no one cares about their gas - that's not what it's
about. He asked them to think about why someone would choose to go to
their gas station instead of another gas station, and used the example of
parents with young children. Parents need to change diapers and gas
station bathrooms are famously disgusting, so if they made an effort to
clean up their bathrooms, that would be a major differentiator for them. So
often organizations get so close to their work that they are unable to take a
step back and ask questions like that.
2) Examples. There are so many great examples in the book that help
people rethink so many things, I honestly can't think of another book that
has so many familiar and usable examples. He talks about his time at
Starbucks when someone presented to the management team the idea
that they could save millions by switching from two-ply tissue to one-ply in
their restrooms. The simple but important point Bedbury makes is that
even if it's the bathroom, you should never do anything that lowers the
quality of the experience your customer has with your organization (his
suggestion was to look at something the customer never sees, like who
Starbucks uses for a long distance carrier). Another great example from
his time at Nike, he overheard someone criticizing Nike Town stores as
being a stupid money losing idea. As an aside Bedbury points out that
Nike Towns were in fact cartoonishly profitable because they charged retail
prices for the products they sold (so as not to undercut other stores) and
without a middle man, almost pure profit. The bigger point he makes
though is that making money wasn't the point of Nike Town. When Nike

Town first went up in Oregon, it was at a time when Nike was expanding
from just shoes to clothing, and the feedback they were getting from
retailers was that they didn't know how to sell Nike clothing, or where to put
it in their stores - so the point of Nike Town was really to create an
example for other retailers - it was a marketing expense, not a profit center
(although it became unexpectedly profitable because it became so
popular). Again, telling organizations be be specific about what the "job" of
a function is, absolutely critical, but at the same time, as Nike stretched
their brand from shoes to include other things, they controlled that brand
extension and were incredibly successful.
Many, many more great examples, and the book is done in a very
conversational tone, it's a very quick read. You will love it. And by the
time you finish it, if not sooner, you will figure out why there's an egg on the
jacket.
My only caveat is that some marketing and branding gurus may see this as
too simplistic - but I would argue that everyone else, people like me, are
the people who will really benefit from this.
So buy Scott's book.
In no uncertain terms was it a primary inspiration for the book Rethink
which I did. Rethink: A Business Manifesto for Cutting Costs and Boosting
Innovation
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