2003-01-11 08:53:18braveheart

A New Brand World

This book was written by Scott Bedbury, who ever worked in NIKE for seven years and then worked in Starbucks during 1995~1998 as the senior marketing vice director. He concluded how to achieve brand leadership from his more-than-12-year working experience. Finally, he gave us 8 principles to follow up.

What I’ve learned from this book is well-known multinational companies’ working methods (like the steps and the processes) of marketing events. In addition, what made me impressive was how the author’s NIKE marketing team could keep taking the lead in sports commodity industry. To understand how the consumers think, they asked a lot of interviews in different age groups. Although it looked simple and not as scientific as quantitative questionnaires, it really worked! This method helped NIKE to understand teenagers’ mind and the other age levels’. When they found the trend of consumers’ preference was changing, they changed faster to feed the desire. It looked quite easy, but they were the real “Just Do It” team to do it in details, so they could make a quite big difference.

Bedbury also mentioned about the importance of the innovation. There were some viewpoints worthy to reprint: “Transcending a product-only relationship and connecting the brand to powerful and often timeless emotion--- “emotional branding”--- will continue to be important in the New Brand World, but it can never replace meaningful product innovation.” “In the future, standing still will be lethal to any brand.” To build a famous brand, in his opinion, having excellent products is the most important factor.

“The brand is who we are!” The author summed up this sentence as the definition of a brand. In his mind, how simple the quintessence is! That’s why I felt excited after reading his composition. Marketing should be simplified as much as possible. In the information-exploding era, simple, clear, and enthusiastic messages are really valuable for communicating with the public.